Affiliated Research Centers and Initiatives
Community Studies Program faculty lead the following research centers and initiatives across campus.
Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies
Affiliated faculty members Miriam Greenberg and Hillary Angelo are the co-founders of the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES). Professor of Community Studies Julie Guthman and affiliated faculty members Lindsey L. Dillon and Madeleine P. Fairbairn are also affiliates of the center. The center 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.
Center for Economic Justice and Action
Affiliated faculty member Heather Bullock is the director of the Center for Economic Justice and Action (CEJA) which was formerly called the Blum Center on Poverty, Social Enterprise, and Participatory Governance. Affiliate Eva Bertram serves as associate director, and Nancy Chen and Steve McKay serve on the center’s advisory board. CEJA is committed to community-engaged research and programming that alleviates poverty, reduces economic inequality, and advances the essential needs of all people. They lead a wide range of research programs and provide funding for students to conduct community-engaged projects.
Center for Labor and Community
Affiliated faculty member Steven McKay has served as the Director of the UCSC Center for Labor and Community (CLC) since 2010. Miriam Greenberg and Chris Benner also hold leadership positions while Jessica Taft, David Brundage and Eva Bertram serve on the advisory board. Alongside workers, students, and community members, the center studies the immediate problems facing working people today and offers organizing curricula, education initiatives, and policy analysis that is relevant and accessible to the working class communities that the center serves.
Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
Affiliated faculty member Jessica Taft is the director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas (Huerta Center). Many affiliated faculty complete fellowships with the center. Past fellows include affiliated faculty members Craig Haney, Steve McKay, Catherine Sue Ramirez, Regina Langhout, Veronica Terriquez, Madeleine P. Fairbairn, Alison Alkon and Leslie Lopez. The center brings together U.S. and international scholars to advance cross-border research that contributes to an enriched understanding of our interconnected lives and futures across the Western Hemisphere. The center hosts programs to professionally mentor students to prepare them for future career success.
Reconstructing Critical Social Theory
Community Studies Program Director Michael McCarthy and affiliated faculty member Hillary Angelo are leading a multicampus collaboration to orient future programming, teaching, and research around a “fourth wave” of critical social theory and renewal of “Marxish” sociology. This collaboration with the Center for Critical Urban and Environmental Studies, UC Berkeley Sociology Department, and UCLA Center for Social Theory and Comparative History establishes a synthetic interpretive framework addressing four themes: new political economies, class fragmentation and racial formation, alternative ecologies, and emancipatory futures. Through workshops and public-facing events, the project brings together campus and community members to forge a community rooted in humanistic inquiry and practice.
Science and Justice Research Center
Affiliated faculty member James Doucet-Battle is co-director of the Science and Justice Research Center (SJRC) and Matthew Sparke serves on the steering committee. Chris Benner, Nancy Chen, Madeleine P Fairbairn Lindsey L Dillon and Julie Guthman are all faculty affiliates. The center brings together seemingly disparate sectors, disciplines and communities to address issues related to biomedical innovation, species extinction, toxic ecologies, healthcare reform, and many other contemporary matters of concern that provoke questions traversing multiple intellectual, institutional and ethico-political worlds.