Social Science Matrix, UC Berkeley’s flagship institute for social science research, continues to spotlight critical scholarship through its Matrix Podcast series. Serving as an organizational “matrix,” the institute supports cross-disciplinary research efforts involving more than 500 social scientists across the Berkeley campus and beyond.
In the latest episode of the Matrix Podcast, host Julia Sizek sat down with Geography Ph.D. ‘24 graduate Morgan P. Vickers to talk about “Social, Spatial, Ecological, and Racial Fixes in New Deal South Carolina.”
Vickers holds a B.A. in American Studies, Communications Studies, and Non-Fiction Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned their Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley in Spring 2024. Now, Vickers is an Assistant Professor of Race/Racialization in the Department of Law, Societies & Justice at the University of Washington
The interview focuses on Vickers’ research on drowned towns of the Santee-Cooper Project in South Carolina, wherein 901 families were displaced in the name of New Deal “progress.” Vickers’ work highlights New Deal infrastructures, transformed ecologies (notably, swamplands), and dispossessed (racialized) populations in order to challenge myths of universal progress and narratives of purportedly moral geographies.
Vickers is currently a Content Editor for Environmental History Now and an Executive Board member of the Black Geographies Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers(AAG). They previously worked with The Black Geographic, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Community Histories Workshop, A Red Record, and the Landscape Specialty Group of AAG.
The episode is now available for streaming on the Matrix website or Apple Podcasts.