Affiliated Research Centers and Initiatives
Our faculty and students collaborate across our department and across campus to explore themes related to our department’s major areas of research through the following research units and initiatives.
Black Geographies
The UCSC Black Geographies lab is a space for collective study and practice at the intersection of Black Studies and Critical Human Geographies. The lab, in its current form, began meeting in the Spring 2020 and is now co-facilitated by professors Camilla Hawthorne and Savannah Shange. The work of the lab encompasses reading groups, writing workshops, symposia, and poetic modes of embodied and artistic inquiry. The group undertakes rigorous, interdisciplinary, and transnational inquiry about the spatialities of Blackness, always oriented toward collective liberation for all beings. This work ties in to our departmental focus on space, place, and mobility.
Campus + Community
Campus + Community, led by Rebecca London, is a center dedicated to supporting ethical and mutually beneficial community-engaged scholarship at UC Santa Cruz. Many colleagues across the university engage with community partners in various ways as part of their scholarship and/or service, and Campus + Community provides support for a campus-wide set of values and support systems to ensure best practices for this community engagement. We aim to produce mutually beneficial, long-term relationships built on mutual trust and strong communication. The center’s work connects to our departmental focus on publics, policy, and law.
Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES)
The Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES), led by Hillary Angelo and Miriam Greenberg, is a laboratory for social scientific research on urbanization and the environment in a time of inequality and climate change. CUES supports scholarly and public-facing research and action related to urban culture and political economy, the pursuit of sustainability and social justice, and the many social and ecological “transitions” that the 21st century will require. The center’s work is part of our department’s research focus in political economies and ecologies, as well as space, place, and mobility.
Center for Labor and Community
The UCSC Center for Labor and Community, led by Steve McKay, was founded in 2007 and is dedicated to the study of working people, the labor movement, and the challenge of the broader global economy as it impacts the working people of California and beyond. Through conferences, workshops, public lectures, and a range of guest speakers, the center focuses on the relationship between the labor movement, social movements, and democratic practices, along with gender, race, and ethnic dynamics and labor activism in an international context. This work often connects to our department’s focus on publics, policy, and law, as well as political economies and ecologies.
Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (Huerta Center) is the first in the University of California system to advance a broad program of interdisciplinary research that brings together Chicanx/Latinx ethnics studies and Latin American area studies. Sociology Department faculty members serve on the center’s executive committee and as affiliated faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students can participate in research and funding opportunities through the center and its affiliated Human Rights Investigations Lab.
Institute for Social Transformation
The Institute for Social Transformation supports the development of research-based solutions that tackle the underlying systemic causes of urgent social and environmental problems. Sociology Department faculty members have served on the institute’s executive board, participated in special events, and received funding as faculty fellows. Students participate in research and internship opportunities through the Building Belonging and Transforming Futures programs.
Science & Justice Research Center
The Science & Justice Research Center, co-led by Jenny Reardon and James Doucet-Battle, is a unique and world renowned initiative that cultivates pedagogy and research capable of responding to moments where questions of science meet questions of ethics and justice. The center is home to the Science & Justice Working Group, graduate training programs, and sponsored research projects. It brings together faculty and students from across the UC Santa Cruz campus and the UCs to innovate experimental civic spaces, collaborative modes of inquiry, and empirically rigorous research. It fosters emerging alliances between seemingly disparate sectors, disciplines, and communities to address the enormous challenges of contemporary societies, such as the governance of emerging technoscience, species extinction, and the ethics of big data and AI.