Social Sciences
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Big Ideas contest offers up to $20,000 for big ideas in social innovation
Big Ideas contest, open to all UC students, seeks student-led, early-stage projects or ideas with a social impact focus.
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MacArthur ‘genius’ grant winner reflects on early influences at UC Santa Cruz
Forrest Stuart has built his career pursuing burning questions about the societal underpinnings of poverty and criminalization across disciplines. Stuart said his research focus has been influenced both by his childhood and the formative experiences of his undergraduate education at University of California, Santa Cruz, where he earned his bachelor’s in politics in 2004.
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Doctoral candidate wins Switzer Fellowship for environmental justice research in El Salvador
James Alejandro Artiga-Purcell, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Studies, was recently selected for the 2020 Switzer Environmental Fellowship as part of a cohort of 20 top scholar-activists from around the country.
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UC Santa Cruz study cited in arguments against gig economy proposition
The report, “On-demand and on-the-edge: Ride-hailing and Delivery Workers in San Francisco,” underscores the financial vulnerability of workers in the gig economy.
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Challenging how we see the prison-industrial complex
An ambitious two-part exhibit, titled Barring Freedom and Visualizing Abolition, organized by the UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences, combines art and activism to address prison and policing issues.
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UC Santa Cruz Human Rights Lab investigates social unrest in Chile
Human Rights Investigations Labs at UCSC and UC Berkeley collaborated on open source research focused on the human rights crisis in Chile, which began with massive anti-government demonstrations a year ago that prompted a swift and sometimes brutal government crackdown on protestors.
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Rising from the ashes
Archaeological researchers from UC Santa Cruz are among the volunteers searching through rubble for homeowners who lost their loved ones’ cremains in the fires that ravaged Oregon and California.
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Alumna Martha Mendoza wins Emmy for work on child detention documentary
‘Kids Caught in the Crackdown’ documentary from PBS Frontline and Associated Press investigates the detention of migrant children in federally-funded shelters.
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LALS doctoral candidate Candy Martínez awarded Native American Scholars Initiative Fellowship
Candy Martínez, a PhD. candidate in Latin America Latino Studies, has been named a 2020-2021 Andrew W. Mellon Native American Scholars Initiative Fellow at the American Philosophical Society.
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The global land rush
In her new book, ‘Fields of Gold, Financing the Global Land Rush,’ Madeleine Fairbairn looks at forces and players that have transformed farmland into a novel financial asset class.
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Summer Session helps students earn degrees
UC Santa Cruz staff and faculty have been steadily working to increase summer session enrollment, leading UCs in online offerings and working with departments to offer the classes students need to graduate.
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John R. Lewis College: Providing the tools to stand up against injustice and create change
John R. Lewis College students take on social justice issues while pushing for positive growth and progress in society.