opportunities

Call for Participation

Summer 2021 Undergraduate Student Researcher Opportunity

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The Science & Justice Research Center is pleased to announce we are now accepting applications for a:

Summer Undergraduate Fellowship

The award was established to support summer research conducted by undergraduate students currently working on established collaborative Center research projects. Undergraduate students in any UC Santa Cruz department may apply. Preference will be given to applicants currently involved in projects. The award is intended as a stipend to support general living expenses, fieldwork or travel (as allowed by COVID-19 and shelter-in-place restrictions), presentation of work, and/or research. Fellowships may support: assisting with conducting interviews and transcription, data analysis and editing of interviews; creating infographics and outreach materials, articles or reports based on findings or events; sharing findings with the broader public (ie: blogposts, news articles). More specifically, tracking, collecting, and organizing articles about the social, political, and economic dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic written by prominent theorists of race, inequality, and STS; or assist with research on and collecting materials related to pharmaceutical licensing agreements bringing drugs to the market, as well as ethical and equity issues related to orphan-disease drug discovery and dissemination. Award amounts may vary up to $500 based on proposed budgets and outcomes; a maximum $2000 in total will be distributed.

CURRENT COLLABORATIVE SUMMER PROJECTS

Incarcerated Care

Theorizing Race After Race

The student should:

  • Be currently enrolled as an undergraduate student at UC Santa Cruz (enrollment during summer not required).
  • Work on an established Center project with support from the faculty lead.
  • Propose clear goals and intended outcomes with: an outline of items to be completed over summer 2021, the methods of your research project; and briefly outline or describe the expenses to be supported by the award.

The student will:

  • Be awarded at the beginning of summer.
  • Adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects if applicable.
  • Submit an end-of-summer report of project status and/or research findings.
  • Be offered a fellowship with the SJRC and listed on the Project’s webpage.

To Apply:

By Monday, May 24, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) expressing interest, letting us know and sending the following:

  1. Your name, major, academic faculty advisor(s).
  2. Your resume/CV.
  3. Why you are interested in the project and how your work/research/career goals would benefit from the fellowship.
  4. Your role and experiences with the current project as related to items listed in an outlined proposal.
  5. Any ideas briefly describing potential research to be completed over Summer 2021.
Call for Participation

Summer 2021 Graduate Student Researcher Opportunity

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The Science & Justice Research Center is pleased to announce we are now accepting applications for:

Summer Graduate Fellowships

The award was established to support summer research conducted by graduate students currently working on established collaborative Center research projects. Graduate students in any UC Santa Cruz department may apply. Preference will be given to applicants who are currently going through or have completed the Training Program. The award is intended as a stipend to support general living expenses, fieldwork or travel (as allowed by COVID-19 and shelter-in-place restrictions), presentation of work, and/or research. Fellowships may support: organizing, planning, and co-facilitating groups; training and coordinating a team of undergraduate researchers and assist with documentation, interviews, transcription and data analysis; fostering collaboration and teamwork among researchers; creating infographics and posters, outreach materials, or articles and reports based on findings or events; sharing findings with the broader public (ie: blogposts, news articles). Award amounts may vary up to $2,500 based on proposed budgets and outcomes; a maximum $10,000 in total will be distributed.

CURRENT COLLABORATIVE SUMMER PROJECTS

Incarcerated Care

Just Biomedicine

Theorizing Race After Race (TRAR)

______

The student should:

  • Be an enrolled graduate student at UC Santa Cruz (enrollment during summer not required).
  • Work on an established Center project with support from the faculty lead.
  • Propose clear goals and intended outcomes with: an outline of items to be completed over summer 2021, the methods of your research project; and briefly outline or describe the expenses to be supported by the award.

The student will:

  • Be awarded at the beginning of summer.
  • Adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects when applicable.
  • Submit an end-of-summer report of project status and/or research findings.
  • Be offered a fellowship with the SJRC and listed on the Project’s webpage.

To Apply:

By Monday, May 24, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) expressing interest. Please let us know the following:

  1. Your name, major, academic faculty advisor(s).
  2. Your resume/CV.
  3. Why you are interested in the project and how your work/research/career goals would benefit from the fellowship.
  4. Your role and experiences with the current project as related to items listed in an outlined proposal.
  5. Any ideas briefly describing potential research to be completed over Summer 2021.

The Pandemicene Podcast Season 2 launches January 27!

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The SJRC Pandemicene Project to reworld towards justice Season 2 of the podcast series begins airing January 27th!

Episode #10 of the series will feature a roundtable discussion with the Pandemicene Team graduate and undergraduate students who crafted and produced 9 podcast episodes, 9 blogs, and a zine for Season 1.
Podcast episodes air Wednesday evenings, 7:00 – 8:00PM PST, on KZSC Santa Cruz. Tune in to 88.1FM or http://streaming.kzsc.org/. Podcast episodes are also available on Spotify and archived on the project site.
book

Re-worlding Towards Justice: Undergraduate students join SJRC researchers

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Through engaging our communities the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) is producing knowledge that can help all of us – scholars and scientists, students and activists – imagine and enact just futures both in our home state of California and in our communities worldwide.

As the SJRC responded to the Covid-19 pandemic, we began Season 1 of our Pandemicene Project in March 2020 from the premise that creating trust-worthy knowledge that can foster a more just world requires attending to the deep inequalities and fissures in the polity that this pandemic has laid bare. The developing areas of concern were captured in the campus news article, “Discrimination, governance, and trust in the age of COVID-19”, featuring SJRC Founding Director Jenny Reardon. In Season 1, UCSC faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students worked together to interview members of the Science & Justice network about scholarly responses to this critical historical moment. A podcast series with 9 episodes produced by students aired on our local radio station (KZSC 88.1 FM) Sunday evenings, and the blog series on the SJRC website expanded. The Daily Beast Interview, featuring James Doucet-Battle, assistant professor of sociology and interim director of SJRC, highlighted the glaring race problems of COVID-19 vaccine trials, while the special issue of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers featuring S&J Advisor and Politics Professor Matt Sparke’s article, “Contextualizing Coronavirus Geographically,” provided additional articles and perspectives on the pandemic. The first installment of the series, Dialogues on COVID-19 and Racism, by SJRC’s Theorizing Race after Race (TRAR) working group, “Black Geographies of Quarantine: A Dialogue with Brandi Summers, Camilla Hawthorne, and Theresa Hice Fromille” published on the UCHRI’s The Foundry.

Attending to what is going on locally (e.g., from the shelter-in-place locations of researchers), while drawing on the power and insights of our community elders and networks, over Winter and Spring 2021 the SJRC’s Pandemicene Project will launch Season 2. Season 2 will produce another round of podcast episodes and will expand to work in tandem with  several new and established collaborative SJRC projects, as described below, that in their own way each help answer our overarching question of how to create knowledge that orients us towards justice in the middle of both a viral pandemic and a pandemic of social inequality and racial discrimination that has sparked global unrest. In Winter quarter, undergraduate student interns, representing the following 14 majors and minors, will join current SJRC researchers: Biochemistry, Cognitive Science, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Economics, Feminist Studies, Film and Digital Media, Legal Studies, Literature, Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Sociology, and Statistics. Learn more about the students and independent researchers.

Our work over Season 2 will culminate in an ImaginACTivism workshop in Spring term. Stay tuned for a Call for Participation and Papers.

The following collaborative center projects will help feed Season 2:

The COVID-19 Pandemicene Project: Re-Worlding Toward Justice – Researchers will expand the zine, blog and podcast series by interviewing policy makers, practitioners, and mutual-aid and community organizers. Current student leads are looking to incorporate additional mediums (ie: animations, soundscapes, illustrations, etc.) and promotion methods (ie: social media, charts, graphics, photographs, maps, other new or historical oral and written materials). Students will help design and guide an ImaginACTivism workshop in Spring term. Learn more: The Pandemicene Project.

Incarcerated Care – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in The Pandemicene Project, students will work directly with Film and Digital Media Professor Sharon Daniel’s team to expand the Unjustly Exposed interactive documentary website on COVID-19 in prisons and jails. Learn more: Season 1 Episode 4: Public Art and Carcerality.

Just Biomedicine: Orphan Drugs – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in The Pandemicene Project, students will work with Dr. Andy Murray (UCSC Sociology alumni, SJTP graduate fellow and independent researcher) and UCSC faculty associated with the Center for Open Access Splicing Therapeutics (Jeremy Sanford, Michael Stone, Jenny Reardon, James Doucet-Battle, Matt Sparke). Students will research items related to pharmaceutical licensing agreements and bringing drugs to the market, and help the C.O.A.S.T. team understand the critical ethical and justice issues related to orphan-disease drug discovery and dissemination of splicing-based therapies. Learn more: Season 1 Student Blog.

Just Biomedicine: Third St. – In May, research from the SJRC Just Biomedicine Third St. research cluster will publish a chapter, “Just Biomedicine on Third Street? Health and Wealth Inequities in SF’s Biotech Hub” in a book (an atlas) titled, Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance. Students will help SJRC celebrate and advertise its launch with contributors in Spring. Learn more: Season 1 Episode 6: Housing Justice and Big Tech. 

Laboratory Life and Social Death: The Problem of Diversity in Science and Society – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in the Pandemicene Project, students will work directly with Sociology Assistant Professor James Doucet-Battle on linkages between the social sciences, African Diaspora Studies, history, politics, and genomic science curriculum and training to conceptualize and develop an engaging and interactive online summer program in partnership with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Students will assist with research on and collecting materials related to the rigor, reproducibility and diversity of biomolecular data; identify other all-campus resources serving ABC students (ie: partner with AARC, HSI initiative, ODEI) and known challenges specific to summer sessions (refer to current BSU demands). Learn more: Bioethical Matriarchy (Doucet-Battle 2016), UC/HBCU initiative.

Theorizing Race After Race – In addition to joining a cohort of SJRC researchers in the Pandemicene Project, students will work directly with Sociology faculty James Doucet-Battle, Camilla Hawthorne, Jaimie Morse, and Jenny Reardon on a series of COVID-related racial health disparities research projects. Learn more: Black Geographies of Quarantine.

Call for Participation

Spring 2020 Undergraduate Student Researcher Opportunity

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The Science & Justice Research Center is pleased to announce we are now accepting applications for a:

Undergraduate Research Fellowship

The award presents a paid research opportunity to first-generation, low income, under-represented groups, undocumented, and/or former foster youth. The award is intended as a stipend to support general living expenses, fieldwork or travel (as allowed by campus or state COVID-19 and shelter-in-place restrictions), presentation of work, and/or research. Undergraduate students currently enrolled in any department at UC Santa Cruz may apply. Preference will be given to applicants currently involved in the project. Established to increase inclusiveness and a sense of belonging in research, the award will support research conducted by one undergraduate student working with the Center project:

Theorizing Race After Race

The student should:
  • Be currently enrolled as an undergraduate student (any department) at UC Santa Cruz during Spring 2020; summer enrollment is not required.
  • Be currently working on the established Center project: Theorizing Race After Race.
The student will:
  • Help design and articulate the project’s future. This may include conducting interviews and transcription, analysis and editing of interviews; as well as tracking, collecting, and organizing articles about the social, political, and economic dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic written by prominent theorists of race, inequality, and STS.
  • Adhere to IRB standards for working with human research subjects if applicable.
  • Be offered a $1,500 Fellowship with the SJRC and listed on the Project’s webpage.
To Apply:

By 12:00Noon, Wed May 13, students should email (scijust@ucsc.edu) expressing interest, letting us know and sending the following:

  1. Your name, major, academic faculty advisor(s).
  2. Your resume/CV.
  3. Why you are interested in the project, how your personal/work/research/career goals would benefit from the fellowship, and how it would contribute to your overall sense of belonging at UC Santa Cruz.
  4. A short statement on your experiences at UCSC or involvement with the SJRC as related to topics addressed by the Project (including human subjects research, events attended, classes taken, etc.).
  5. Any ideas briefly describing potential research to be completed over Spring and Summer 2020.

Information on SJRC’s TRAR project can be found at: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2018/11/27/theorizing-race-after-race/

Call for Participation

Call for Undergraduate Individual Study

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The SJRC hosts Individual Study students to collaborate on current research projects to help inform collaborative research projects, developing blogs, opinion pieces, papers and proposals as well as Center events and programming. Students can also work on senior thesis projects related to Center Themes (ie: forensic genomics, queer ecology, CRISPR, data and privacy, health care and incarceration, the future of public goods, artificial intelligence and ethics, reproducibility and diversity in research). The Individual Study course can range from 2-5 units. It can be independent or part of a group.

Opportunities include:

Available Winter / Spring 2020

PG&E – assist with research on and collecting materials related to PG&E’s energy shutoffs. Refer to the developing blog: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2019/10/19/pge-shutoff/

Forensic Genomics & Ethics – assist with research on and collecting materials related to forensic genomics and ethics. Refer to the developing blog: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/2019/11/27/developing-story-forensic-genomics/

UC/HBCU Proposal Development: “Laboratory Life and Social Death: The Problem of Diversity in Science and Society” – assist with research on and collecting materials related to reproducibility and diversity of biomolecular data; help identify current UC/HBCU programs at UC Santa Cruz and potential UCSC students and colleagues that align with Spelman and Morehouse Universities’ Sociology and STS (Science and Technology Studies) research; help identify current campus resources serving ABC students and known challenges specific to summer sessions; help plan to integrate future HBCU undergraduate students (juniors and seniors) to engage in UCSC summer campus activities beginning Summer 2021. Information on the UC/HBCU initiative can be found at: https://www.ucop.edu/uc-hbcu-initiative/index.html

Orphan Drugs – assist with research on and collecting materials related to pharmaceutical licensing agreements bringing drugs to the market; ethical and equity issues related to orphan-disease drug discovery and dissemination.

Find ways undergraduates can get involved in Science & Justice research. Apply no later than the Monday of Week 1 and email a writing sample to scijust@ucsc.edu.