Past Events
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October 2022 Playing Online in Caring Communities
Assistant Professor Kate Ringland
Monday, October 10th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m.
People participate in online communities for a myriad of reasons, including social support, finding and maintaining friendships, and exploring facets of their identity. Additionally, and importantly, these online communities are places for people to spend their leisure time and have fun. In this talk, I explore how different playful communities leverage technology, such as social media or games, as a place for support and care. I present two case studies including a community for autistic youth that uses Minecraft and the musicians BTS’s fandom community, ARMY, that uses a myriad of social media. I will discuss how playfulness on social technology holds a key role in facilitating access to community support and can bridge virtual and physical worlds in everyday life. Watch the event here. |
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September 2022 How Conversational AI Virtual Assistants Learn to Work with Humans Professor Yi Zhang
Monday, September 12th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m
Conversational AI virtual assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri, Google Assistantsuch, chatbots for business etc.) are becoming popular in different channels (social media, text messages, voice, phone, email, in car, physical robots, etc.). They communicate with humans through natural language dialogs to achieve social, informational or task oriented goals. Drawing from her research and industry practice, Yi Zhang will talk about how computers learn to understand human intention and get things done, their current limitations, and how we can better teach those AI systems in the future.
Watch the event here.
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July 2022 Morning Larks and Night Owls Shed Light on the Molecular Circadian Clock Professor Carrie Partch
Monday, July 11th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Our lives are intimately linked to Earth’s 24-hour solar cycle via circadian clocks that coordinate our physiology and behavior into rhythms that coincide with the day/night cycle. The Partch lab has been working to identify how dedicated clock proteins interact with one another to establish a deeper understanding of the molecular clock that underlies circadian rhythms in humans. Recent insights into the genetic basis of morning lark and night owl behavior have shed light on key steps in the clock that play a powerful role in determining the intrinsic timing of circadian clocks in humans. Some of these recent advances will be discussed to explore the biochemical basis for circadian timekeeping.
Watch the event here. |
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June 2022 Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine Associate Professor Jennifer Lynn Kelly
Tuesday June 14th, 2022
6:30-8:00pm
Drawing from her research on solidarity tours in Palestine, Jennifer Kelly shows how solidarity tourism in Palestine functions as a fraught localized political strategy, and an emergent industry, through which Palestinian organizers refashion conventional tourism to the region by extending deliberately truncated invitations to tourists to come to Palestine and witness the effects of Israeli state practice on Palestinian land and lives. She shows how Palestinian organizers both extend and redefine this invitation to witness, as well as intervene in tourist demands for evidence and desire for performances of trauma by asking tourists to instead confront the violence of their own desire in Palestine. She also details the conditions that have led Palestinians to make their case through solidarity tourism in the first place, describing the ways in which tourists travel to Palestine to see the effects of Israeli occupation for themselves despite the volumes of literature Palestinians have produced on their own condition. In this way, Kelly shows how Palestinian organizers, under the constraints of military occupation, and in a context in which they do not control their borders or the historical narrative, wrest both the capacity to invite and, in Edward Said’s words, “the permission to narrate” from Israeli control. Watch the event here. |
May 2022 Understanding our Kinship with Algae Professor Jennifer Parker
Tuesday May 10th, 2022
6:30-8:00pm
The Algae Society BioArt Design Lab is a global collective of interdisciplinary researchers working together with algae as a non-human international research partner. As a collaborative group of artists, scientists and scholars, they experiment, design, and exhibit with algae, working from a companion and multispecies studies approach. They share their evolving interdisciplinary process, highlighting artistic works from Algae Society members and invited guests while reflecting on each researcher’s aim, process, materiality, and aesthetic considerations. With these works they endeavor to ignite societal behavioral shifts and direct action in response to the challenges that human-algal ecosystems face under climate change. Watch the event here. |
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April 2022 The Easter Rising and New York: How Ireland’s Revolution Triggered a Fight Against Empire Professor David Brundage
Monday, April 11th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m.
This talk will assess the impact of the 1916 Easter Rising on a variety of anticolonial movements beyond Ireland and the Irish diaspora, focusing on New York City, long recognized as the overseas capital of Irish nationalist agitation and mobilization. But New York played a similar role for a variety of other descent groups and diasporas as well. After an overview of some of these non-Irish groups in the city (including African Americans and South Asians), this topic will be placed in the context of World War I and post-war efforts to end colonialism and foster self-determination for nations around the world. While some historians have emphasized the role of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's ideas in these efforts, this talk will demonstrate the centrality of the Easter Rising and the subsequent Irish Revolution, as understood by both Irish and non-Irish intellectuals and political activists in the increasingly cosmopolitan city of New York. Watch the event here. |
March 2022 Associate Professor Benedict Paten
Tuesday, March 15th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m.
A complete human genome is around six billion DNA bases in length, half of which is inherited from each parent. In this talk, Associate Professor Benedict Paten will discuss some of the rapidly developing technologies we use to decode a genome will be explained, along with how we can use this knowledge to improve healthcare for many. Watch the event here. |
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February 2022 Professor Stefano Profumo
Monday, February 14th, 2022
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Four fifths of the matter in the universe is made of something completely different from the "ordinary matter" we know and love. Professor Stefano Profumo will explain why this "dark matter" is an unavoidable ingredient to explain the universe as we observe it, and will describe what the fundamental, particle nature of the dark matter could possibly consist of. He will then give an overview of strategies to search for dark matter as a particle, describe a few examples of possible hints of discovery, and outline ways forward in this exciting hunt. Watch the event here. |
January 2022 Professor Chris Wilmers
Monday, January 11, 2021
6:30-8:00 p.m.
Human activities dominate almost all regions of the globe. To persist in these human dominated areas, large carnivores must adjust their physiology, behavior and ecology and similarly, humans must be willing to accommodate these species through changes in business as usual. In this talk presented our research on large carnivores from the past 15 years and discuss some ways in which this balance is and is not being achieved. Watch the event here. |
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December 2021 Professor Mark Amengual
Monday, December 13, 2021 6:30–8:00 p.m. In this talk, Professor Mark Amengual will discuss and dispel several myths about bilingualism and bilingual speech, offer an overview of the potential cognitive benefits of being bilingual, and conclude by providing evidence of the resourcefulness of bilinguals and multilinguals to overcome cross-language influence in their speech demonstrating the flexibility of their sound systems.
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November 2021 Art, Animation & Politics-Creative Practice as Political Act Professor Dee Hibbert JonesMonday, November 8, 2021
6:30-8:00 p.m.With a focus on her own creative practice, Art Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones explores the impact and challenges of a creative practice that intends to inform, persuade and examine power and politics. Watch the event here. |
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October 2021 Michael M. Chemers, Director of Monster Studies
Monday, October 11, 2021
6:30-8:00 p.m.
The act of monsterization is not, at its core, very mysterious. Whenever there is an epistemic break, different elements of society attempt to cope by locating the site of disturbance, identifying it as Other, and then mapping that category upon the bodies of the marginalized. The potential for the monster to play an important role in the envisioning of new and better worlds is one our students are hungry to learn. Watch the event here. |
September 2021
Dr.Elizabeth Beaumont Monday, September 13, 2021 6:30-8:00 p.m. From the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2018, to the role of white nationalists in the U.S. Capitol insurgency, recent events have spotlighted white supremacist groups. To grapple with these forces and broader problems of racism and inequality, we need a deeper understanding of the klan movement -- the Ku Klux Klan and loosely aligned white supremacist groups -- and its influence on American political development.
Event recording coming soon
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August 2021
Dr. Janette Dinishak
Monday, August 9, 2021
According to the neurodiversity perspective, some neurocognitive differences that are taken to be disorders should instead be understood as forms of human diversity. Proponents of this perspective, as it applies to autism, claim that autism is an ineliminable aspect of an autistic person’s identity and that atypical functioning and modes of experience associated with autism are made disabling by lack of accommodation by society, not by the condition itself. This talk will critically examine conceptual, ethical, and political dimensions of the neurodiversity perspective on autism to explore its significance both within the academy and outside it.
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Dr.Jody Greene and Dr. Stephanie Chan
Monday, July 12, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about, and will bring about, many permanent changes in college teaching and learning. From technologically-enhanced education to trauma-informed pedagogy, COVID has not only precipitated but also accelerated changes already under way at UCSC and elsewhere. Join UCSC Professor Jody Green in conversation with UCSC alumna and Foothill College Professor Stephanie Chan. Greene and Chan will discuss UCSC’s long history of educational innovation and what teaching and learning might look like post-pandemic.
Watch the event here
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June 2021
Dr.Leila Parsa
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May 2021
Professor Emeritus George Blumenthal
Watch the event here
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Dr. Rebecca DuBois
Watch the event here
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March 2021
Dr. Rebecca A. London
Watch the event here
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Dr. Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Watch the event here
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January 2021
Dr. Ari Friedlaender
Watch the event here
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2020Archive |
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December 2020
Professor John Jordan
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November 2020
Professor Sylvanna M. Falcón
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October 2020
Professor Douglas N.C Lin
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September 2020 Online Groceries: eCommerce, the pandemic & the future of work in retail food Professor Chris Benner |
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August 2020 |
July 2020 Mercury in Coastal Fog – Evidence for Bioaccumulation in Food Webs Professor Peter Weiss-Penzias |
| June 2020 There Are No Single-Player Video Games Professor Michael John |
May 2020 Emerging From the Job Market Chaos: A More Successful You? Dean of UC Santa Cruz Extension P.K. Agarwal |
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April 2020 Click here to see photos from the event |
March 2020 Click here to see photos from this event |
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February 2020 Click here to see photos from this event |
January 2020 Click here to see photos from the event |
2019Archive |
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December 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
November 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
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October 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
September 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
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August 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
July 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
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June 2019 Sorry, no photos from this event |
May 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
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April 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
March 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
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February 2019 Click here to see photos from the event |
January 2019 Challenges on the Edge: Climate Change, Sea-Level Rise and the Future of California's Coast Click here to see photos from the event |
2018Archive |
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December 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
November 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
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October 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
September 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
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August 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
July 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
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June 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
May 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
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April 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
March 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
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February 2018 Click here to see photos from the event |
