Research Roundup: Summer 2024

Anthropology

Assistant Professor Askwak Hauter published ​​”The Reparative Work of the Imagination” in the American Journal of Islam and Society. The essay and community-based project traces the works of Yemeni artists that meditate on the conditions of the image of the Yemeni as lacking migrants and how it weighs heavily on community, trust, and individual and communal well-being. It illustrates the reparative power of the imagination. In turn, it considers how local political histories mediate communal aspirations, as well as the difficult psychic work necessary to articulate this aspiration amid cultural desolation. 

Associate Professor Megan Moodie is a co-Principal Investigator on an almost $95,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to hold a cross-subfield anthropology conference. This conference is planned for March 2025 and is titled "Approaches to disability in anthropology: Creating space for convergence and innovation." 

She also recently co-authored the paper "Patients as knowledge partners in the context of complex chronic conditions," in Medical Humanities. The paper engages expertise in patient-led medical research and lived experience of disabling chronic illness with collaborators from across the globe.

In July, Moodie was an invited panelist for the National Science Foundation's Disability Equity Initiative Tipoff Event, "Access and Equity in STEM: Disability and Innovation in Fundamental Research." This event brought together disability experts from across STEM fields to address NSF staff, including program officers and NSF leadership, on essential equity and access issues.

Community Studies

Professor Julie Guthman co-authored the paper “Speculating on Collapse: Unrealized Socioecological Fixes of Agri-food Tech” with Environmental Studies professor Madeleine Fairbairn, published in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Together, they explain the financing downturn of "moonshot" technologies like indoor farms and cellular meats, which after absorbing a great deal of financial capital, became overvalued. They argue that these ventures’ success was premised on the collapse of conventional food systems.

Guthman also published a new book, The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food. It takes on the solution culture of Silicon Valley and how it has made its way into universities, to the detriment of preparing students to engage critically with the world's problems. 

Environmental Studies

Professor Sikina Jinnah was the lead author of “Do Small Scale Outdoor Geoengineering Experiments Require Governance?” in Science, which highlights the governance lessons learned through her experience of co-chairing the Advisory Committee for SCoPEx. SCoPEx could have been the world's first outdoor solar geoengineering experiment but was canceled in spring 2024 in part due to challenges in reaching agreement on how public engagement should proceed for the proposed experiment. In this article, co-authored by the Advisory Committee, they argue that ad hoc committees are an ineffective means to govern small-scale experiments and should be replaced with a standardized/centralized governance process. 

Using solar geoengineering (SG) as a case, Jinnah also co-authored “Building Capacity to Govern Emerging Climate Intervention Technologies” in Elementa Science of the Anthropocene. The authors argue that capacity building is needed for effective and inclusive governance of emerging climate intervention technologies.  The authors develop the concept of “governance capacity building,"  which they argue is needed to enable multiple types of actors to contribute to all stages of the governance process. 

Her third article published this summer, “Toward an Evidence-informed, Responsible, and Inclusive Debate on Solar Geoengineering: A Response to the Proposed Non-Use Agreement in WIRES Climate Change,” responds to the proposed international “non-use agreement”  on solar geoengineering (SG). The authors argue that such pre-emptive rejection of public research and consultation would deprive future policy-makers of the knowledge and capability to support informed decisions to safely and equitably limit climate risk, sustain human welfare, and protect threatened ecosystems. They propose an alternative near-term pathway that includes assessing SG risks and benefits in the context of related climate risks and responses and building a more globally inclusive conversation on SG and its governance.

Lastly, Jinnah was recently interviewed for the story, Silicon Valley Renegades Pollute the Sky to Save the Planet, in The New York Times about a start-up company in Silicon Valley doing rogue solar geoengineering "experiments.” The company has been releasing sulfur-filled balloons in the stratosphere, erroneously claiming the balloons are cooling the planet and selling "cooling credits." “They are a couple of tech bros who have no expertise in doing what they’re claiming to do,” she said. “They’re not scientists and they’re making claims about cooling credits that nobody has validated.”

Assistant Professor Maywa Montenegro de Wit co-authored “The Evidence Project: Genetic (geo)engineering in a climate-changing world” published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. This article explores evidence for food systems transformations, including what is considered evidence and how it is used by different people and understood by various audiences. The authors examine the case of gene-editing crops for carbon drawdown. Connecting Science and Technology Studies scholarship with critiques of colonialism, capitalism, and empire, they offer a framework to analyze evidence via interlinked levels of practice, political economy, and ontological foundations.  

Additionally, Montenegro de Wit was one of 23 contributors to “Knowledge democratization approaches for food systems transformation,” an article in Nature Food that considers how narrow views of what constitutes evidence have left blind spots in food system decision-making. The authors argue alternative ways of making and sharing transdisciplinary knowledge hold lessons for more equitable policy processes through three principles: 1) Epistemic or cognitive justice; 2) Intercultural co-creation; (3) Knowledge mutualism & exchange. By anchoring actions and policies in these principles, scholars can help address epistemic biases and deepen democracy in the co-construction of knowledge.

She was also interviewed by The Markup about her courses’ AI policy, which she shared publicly earlier this year. This interview delves into UCSC’s policies around AI use, how students have responded to her critical narrative approach, and what critical conversations have been cracked open by (but not with) generative AI. 

Assistant Professor Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela was one of the TEDxSanta Cruz speakers, giving her talk on "The case for a birdwatching vacation" which discusses the potential of birdwatching tourism to serve as a conservation and rural economic development alternative in tropical countries. Additionally, she was the senior author of a paper that redefines the way range maps are made for birds, using data from expert-drawn maps, ecoregions, and citizen science records. The authors present new and openly available range and area of habitat maps for 1,633 bird species in Colombia, and describe a new method to estimate uncertainty within distributions. These maps are instrumental for ecological studies and to guide conservation action. 

Politics

Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Center for Economic Justice and Action (CEJA) Eva Bertram co-authored the center’s report on a community-engaged research project in partnership with Habitat for Humanity Monterey Bay. The study examines the impact of affordable housing and low-income homeownership on economic security, health and well-being, family relations, civic and community engagement, and intergenerational mobility. Interviews were conducted by a team of trained CEJA undergraduate and graduate student researchers and their findings are analyzed and summarized in the report.

Latin American and Latino Studies

In spring, the LALS Department’s UCOP HSI-DDI proposal was accepted to support a summer graduate publishing institute and job market workshop. These summer initiatives, led by Professor Patricia Pinho, wrapped up in September. The final segment of this year’s programming will be a grant-writing lab in spring 2025.

In June 2024, Professor Patricia Pinho co-organized the international workshop “Studies of Whiteness in Latin America: Interdisciplinary, Transregional, and Intergenerational Dialogues" at Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the workshop

brought together twenty-two scholars based in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, the United States, and the United Kingdom to discuss theories, methods, challenges, and solutions unique to the study of whiteness in the region and outline a collaborative agenda for research, publishing, and teaching.