UCR is a locus for cutting-edge research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts on transnational and global issues. The University is home to several interdisciplinary research Centers and Institutes where fundamental and policy-oriented research promotes a better understanding of processes of global and regional change. These include the Center for Ideas and Society, the Institute for Research on World-Systems (IROWS), the Program on Global Studies (POGS), a campus branch of the system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), and The California Agriculture and Food Enterprise (CAFÉ). The new School of Public Policy offers exciting opportunities for research on (in)equality, sustainability, and other regional issues.

Global Studies is the home of several related programs that explore migration and the politics of mobility by developing innovative cross-disciplinary, mobile collaborative methods of research and practice.

The Moving Matters Traveling Workshop is a mobile platform for research on migration that joins the artists and scholars in different locations to explore their common experience of living in several countries.  The program was sparked by the publication of Professor Susan Ossman’s book Moving Matters Paths of Serial Migration in 2013 and has since developed exhibitions, performances, and public interventions in museums, arts centers, and public spaces in the USA, France, the Netherlands, and Romania.

Sea Seed a play about paths of migration grew out of UCR Professor Erith Jaffe-Berg’s involvement with the MMTW. Along with Matthew McCray and his ovation-award-winning Son of Semele Ensemble (SOSE) of Los Angeles she has developed a collaboratively written play that dramatizes a family celebration that brings together family members who have never moved and others have followed divergent paths of migration. Several performances in Riverside and Los Angeles have enabled SOSE to integrate audience reactions to their work.