UCLA School of Education & Information Studies

Disabled Desires for Reimagining Archives: Past Experiences toward Future Possibilities
2026-04-09 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Gracen Brilmyer, McGill University

Through historic records that document disabled people in ways that can reinforce ableist, sanist, or medicalized stereotypes to outright absence from other types of records, disabled people can feel erased in history through archives. Alternatively, community-based archives have been shown to offset historical imbalances through communities representing themselves on their own terms. This talk addresses preliminary findings from a new project by the Disability Archives Lab that focuses on the ways that disabled people imagine archives differently. This project— conducted by, with, and for disabled people—uses community-based methods to identify current issues in archives as well as alternative approaches to archiving. Centering the powerful words of disabled people, this research not only aims to understand the needs and desires of disabled people who have worked with archival materials but also demonstrates the critical role of disabled people in building and designing the scaffolding for a new disability digital community archive.

To attend, email striola@g.ucla.edu for the Zoom link.

AERA Reception in Los Angeles
2026-04-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Pez Cantina, 401 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, California, 90071
Join us for our 2026 UCLA Ed&IS AERA Reception in Los Angeles! Don’t miss the perfect opportunity to connect and network with fellow UCLA Alumni, Faculty, Students, and Staff.

Hosted by UCLA Dean Christina Christie and Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, Chair, UCLA Department of Education

For more information, please contact Amy Lassere at alassere@support.ucla.edu or 310.206.0375.

Please note, our reception is being hosted for AERA Conference attendees, Ed&IS Alumni, and Ed&IS Faculty & Staff. All guests must be 21 yrs and over.

Register Now

View the UCLA Ed&IS at AERA schedule here.

UCLA Mann Community School Centennial Celebration
2026-04-10 15:00 - 18:00 | Horace Mann UCLA Community School, 7001 S. St. Andrews Place, Los Angeles, California, 90047
Join the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA Center for Community Schooling, & Mann UCLA Community School faculty and students to celebrate Mann’s Centennial and Mural Festival.

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3:00PM:     Registration opens

3:30PM:     Welcome – Opening Remarks

3:40PM:     Student Alumni Panel

4:00PM:     Celebrating LAUSD, Community, and Mann UCLA-CS milestones with UCLA and LAUSD Leadership

4:10PM:     The Power of Community Partnerships: Unveiling of UCLA Banner

4:20PM:     Mural Project Reveal from Branded Arts

4:30-6:00PM: Student Performances, Mural Gallery and tours

About the Mural Project:

In collaboration with Branded Arts, during the week of April 6, Mann UCLA Community School campus will be transformed into a vibrant hub of creativity as twelve new murals are created through deep collaboration between students and internationally recognized and Los Angeles–based artists. Rather than simply observing, students will work alongside artists—sharing ideas, contributing to designs, and participating in the painting process—turning the campus into an active site of learning, expression, and co-creation.

At the heart of the celebration is the powerful role students play in shaping the work itself. Through workshops, conversations, and hands-on experiences, they will gain firsthand insight into the creative process while seeing their identities, cultures, and perspectives reflected in the murals. A student-centered symposium will further connect them with leaders across art, technology, and civic life, opening pathways to future opportunities. Rooted in themes of unity, identity, mental health, and representation, the festival not only honors the school’s 100-year legacy—it elevates student voice, ownership, and imagination as central to its future.

From Code Work to Place Work: Digital Nomads, Infrastructural Others, and the Grammar of Proximate Elsewheres
2026-04-16 14:00 - 15:50 | Zoom
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Héctor Beltrán, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City and San Juan, Dr. Héctor Beltrán will examine how U.S. tech workers construct proximate elsewheres, locations close enough for convenience, yet foreign enough to sustain the nomadic calculus. The talk engages anthropology of technology, platform studies, and relational racialization frameworks to ask: who counts as infrastructure, whose knowledge gets indexed, and what refusal looks like from inside a system that wasn’t built to accommodate it.

Zoom Link

California Early Wealth Account System (CEWAS) Summit: Building Economic Prosperity for Every Child
2026-04-17 08:00 - 17:00 | UCLA University Club, 480 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, California, 90095
Be part of a growing movement to close the wealth gap and expand economic mobility for California’s children and families.

The Second Annual California Early Wealth Account System (CEWAS) Summit brings together leaders from across California and the nation to explore how early wealth accounts are transforming opportunities for families and strengthening pathways to post-secondary education and long-term financial security.

At this year’s Summit, participants will examine the evolution of Child Savings Accounts (CSAs) and Child Development Accounts (CDAs), including the expansion of CalKIDS, HOPE Accounts, and other early wealth-building initiatives. Through new research, real-world case studies, and cross-sector dialogue, attendees will gain practical insights into how these programs can be strengthened, scaled, and sustained statewide.

The Summit convenes leaders from public agencies, education, philanthropy, elected officials, and community organizations to reflect on progress, share lessons from the field, and identify next steps for building a more equitable early wealth infrastructure in California.

Conference highlights include:

New research on the impact of early wealth-building initiatives

Perspectives from leaders implementing CSA and CDA programs

National developments in early wealth-building, including 530A Accounts, also known as Trump Accounts

Strategies to expand access, advance equity, and increase long-term economic mobility

Opportunities to connect with cross-sector partners committed to building prosperity for every child

All registrants are invited to showcase their work in the Summit’s poster gallery, creating space for peer learning and collaboration across programs and regions.

The full Summit agenda, including detailed session descriptions and featured discussions, is now live on Eventbrite.

Early bird registration is encouraged by February 28. Final registration closes March 31.

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Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies
2026-04-17 09:00 - 18:00 | James West Alumni Center, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095
The UCLA Department of Information Studies is proud to be co-sponsoring Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies

“Feminist and Queer Ecologies,” explores how environments and ecologies are shaped, understood, and contested through relations of sex, gender, and sexuality. The theme also considers how feminist and queer theorists, artists, and organizers have drawn on ecological processes and environmental knowledge to build new insights, movements, and practices.

Join us for graduate student presentations highlighting innovative research at the intersections of gender, sexuality, environment, and justice. The conference will feature keynote speaker Cutcha Risling Baldy (Cal Poly Humboldt; NAS Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute), whose work centers Indigenous feminisms, land relations, and food sovereignty.

Gendered and colonial ideas of wilderness, domesticity, and reproduction have historically shaped landscapes and environmental policy. At the same time, feminist and queer methodologies—from place-based storytelling to multimodal practice—offer critical tools for climate resilience, environmental justice, and community well-being. Around the world, social movements resisting environmental injustice—from Standing Rock to Flint, from the Everglades to rural India—have been led by women and gender-expansive people. Climate change and climate justice continue to affect communities differentially along lines of gender, sexuality, race, and class, revealing how struggles for ecological flourishing are inseparable from feminist and queer justice.

Feminist and queer ecologies demand multidisciplinary collaboration. This year’s theme invites environmental scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, organizers, and practitioners to come together across methods, disciplines, temporalities, species, and geographies. It encourages experimentation with scientific inquiry, ethnography, storytelling, political theory, environmental history, modeling, and other forms of knowledge-making and truth-telling.

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Evidence, Expertise, and Automation in Forensic Reconstruction
2026-04-23 14:00 - 15:50 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Stacy Wood, UCLA

3D laser scanning technology has been used in forensic analysis and virtual crime scene reconstruction for at least a decade. While rendering a reconstruction involves a combination of automated tools and expert intervention, the reconstruction collapses and stands in for myriad forms of forensic science, many of which do not represent robust scientific consensus despite their relative ubiquity across the criminal legal system. The models produced shift both the theoretical and practical forms of expertise within the courtroom and present challenges for the long-term ability to revisit evidence. This talk uses this technology as a jumping off point to think about complex media objects that simultaneously function as legal evidence, media spectacle and public record.

Fighting Flames: Information Infrastructures in Trying Times
2026-04-30 14:00 - 15:50 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Emily Drabinski, Queens College, City University of New York

Since 2021, efforts to censor materials and programming have compounded ongoing disinvestment in public institutions, leaving libraries struggling to fulfill their missions. As protesters disrupted storytimes and library board meetings, library workers, patrons, supporters, and advocates have organized to fight these assaults on the right to read. This talk asks what gets lost when resources are wholly directed at the fire in front of us, and what our responsibilities are to build boring things at the end of the world.

No RSVP is needed to attend.

Building an Equitable Community-Engaged Research Agenda in IS
2026-05-21 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Michelle Caswell, UCLA

This workshop draws from the emerging area of community archives to present principles and protocols for ethically conducting community-engaged IS research with (rather than just about) minoritized communities. Based on a white paper collaboratively authored between community archivists and archival studies scholars, the first half of the workshop will address the current state of academic research on community archives, its impact on communities represented and served by such organizations, and ways to envision and enact more equitable relationships moving forward. The second half of the workshop will give participants a chance to apply the principles and protocols to their own research projects in IS, and brainstorm about designing more equitable community-engaged research projects in IS moving forward.

Knowing as Moving vs. Moving as Knowing
2026-06-04 14:00 - 15:50 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Susan Leigh Foster, UCLA

This presentation builds off Dr. Susan Leigh Foster’s recent book, Knowing as Moving, by assessing the difference between claims that moving is a form of knowing as distinct from the hypothesis articulated in my book that it is necessary to move in order to know. She will endeavor to review some of the literatures she used to build this theory as well as consider how such a thesis upends the colonial duality of “mind” and “body.”

No RSVP is needed to attend.
