Wednesday, October 26, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM

SJRC Common Room Oakes 231 + Zoom Registration

Join SJRC scholars for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work!

At this session, we will hear from Science & Justice Training Program Fellows Carrie Hamilton (Environmental Studies) and Kellie Petersen (Sociology) who are undertaking research on the system of servers and associated technologies that underpin the global shared network of computers, computing power, and data storage, commonly referred to as “the Cloud” or cloud computing. They are interested in exploring how the material dimensions of the Cloud–and the sense of amorphousness that it conjures–exacerbate social and environmental injustices by investigating the physical infrastructures, natural resources, and human labor that underpin large data centers.

Carrie Hamilton is a PhD student in environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her work draws on political ecology and critical resource geographies to examine the social and environmental dilemmas posed by the expanding U.S. energy transition mineral frontier. Prior to coming to UCSC, she worked as a program associate at the Social Science Research Council, the administrative coordinator of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science, and a research technician at the Center for the Study of Adolescent Risk and Resilience at Duke University. She earned her bachelor’s in environmental science and geography from UNC Chapel Hill.

Kellie Petersen (she/her) is a PhD student in the Sociology department. Her research interests broadly concern future-focused themes such as climate change and the Anthropocene, technology, and urbanization. She has a BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Northern Iowa and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Florida.