Science and Justice Training Program

The Science and Justice Training Program trains science and engineering graduate students alongside social science, humanities and arts graduate students in collaborative research practices that are both empirically robust and ethically responsive for exploring the meeting of questions of science and knowledge with questions of ethics and justice. The program is unique in its effort to broaden the scope of ethics education in science and engineering to include and build new sites and practices for pursuing social justice.

More information on the Science and Justice Research Center and its initiatives can be found here.

Science and Justice Curriculum

Science and Justice: Experiments in Collaboration is cross listed as BME/CRES/FMST/SOCY 268A. The seminar is the gateway course into the Science and Justice Training Program. The Science and Justice Research Seminar (ANTH 267B, BME/FMST/SOCY 268B) is not currently offered.

Course Description

Many of today’s most important challenges require collaboration across historic divides between natural and social sciences, arts and engineering, the academy and activism, and so on. Living on the planet with clean water, food and means for a good life requires forging novel enactments of justice along with expanded conceptions of knowledge and evidence. Forging livable and just relations among humans and non-humans are not just matters for legal experts, but are socioecological and biopolitical accomplishments. Deciding what property is and its future on a planet where ownership is the domain of the few proceeds not just in courtrooms, but in laboratories. This class offers a unique opportunity for graduate students from engineering, natural and social sciences, humanities and the arts to learn to labor together to understand and address these and other critical issues. The course proceeds through problem-based inquiry at the junction of science & justice. A series of classes will model collaborative conversations that pair a science and engineering scholar with a scholar from the social sciences, humanities and arts. Past topics include de-extinction, soil socio-ecologies, and racial justice and genomics. Throughout, you will work with your fellow students to imagine a possible collaboration that engages your own research questions.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the requirements, graduate fellows will receive a notation on their official transcripts and a certificate of completion recognized by the UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate and Graduate Division.

Graduate students interested in pursuing the Science and Justice Training Program should contact the Science and Justice Research Center (scijust@ucsc.edu).