Centers

The Institute has seven interrelated centers that conduct multidisciplinary research projects in addition to a variety of other activities including colloquia and conferences, data archiving, and training. 

Asian American Research Center advances innovative research, curricula, and programs to address a multiplicity of national and global issues facing Asian American communities. AARC works to raise public awareness of Asian American/diaspora issues and advance cutting-edge research, develop innovative curricula, and promote community-campus engagement

Lok Siu, Chair

Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies encourages and nurtures comparative scholarship on right-wing movements both in the US and abroad during the 20th and 21st centuries. The center promotes research, publishes research findings, supports graduate and undergraduate training, and sponsors conferences, colloquia and other public events that bring together leading scholars to share new research and engage in interdisciplinary dialog related to this field of study.

Lawrence Rosenthal, Chair

Berkeley Center for Social Medicine engages the intersection of social systems, social difference, health and health care in the United States and across the globe.  The Center links to the discipline of social medicine internationally by bringing together Bay Area scholars from the social and historical sciences who are working on questions related to medicine, the health sciences, public health, global health, the social structuring of suffering, violence and the body.  The Center promotes research, multidisciplinary writing projects, graduate and undergraduate training, as well as conferences, colloquia and other events that engage broad publics.

Charles Briggs, Co-Chair

Seth M. Holmes, Co-Chair

Center for Ethnographic Research is devoted to research involving direct observation of social interaction in urban areas. Research using the three traditions of direct observation (positivist, symbolic interaction, and ethnomethodology) are represented within the center. Current projects include violence in schools, work strategies among poor youth in Iran and Morocco, sacrifice among US armed service families, health behavior among the elderly poor, Palestinians in refugees camps, and the influence of ethnicity and religion on Arab American business networks. 

Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Chair

Center for Research on Social Change (formerly Institute for the Study of Social Change) develops interdisciplinary research initiatives that examine the factors promoting and inhibiting social change in the United States and abroad. A major focus of the Center is how immigration, globalization, economic restructuring, and development of new technologies have shaped and changed the structure and culture of various spheres within societies throughout the world.

Tina K. Sacks, Chair

Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues  provides the people of Indian country with pragmatic research products that can be employed to improve the quality of life on Indian reservations across the U.S. The Center fulfills this mission by engaging in collaborative research projects, providing technical assistance and training; and sponsoring colloquia and other events open to the public on issues of concern to Native communities.

Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Chair

Latinx Research Center (formerly Center for Latino Policy Research) promotes interdisciplinary knowledge across the humanities, social sciences, science, and technology. The “x” in the name marks the non-binary of sexual and gender diversity and development, as well as the unknown which is yet to be mapped about the understudied and rapidly growing and transforming Latinx transnational communities. The Latinx Research Center is in the process of becoming an independent research entity at Berkeley.

Laura E. Pérez, Chair