Julia is a writer and anthropologist who studies the California desert. She currently a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, where she runs programs, plans events, and interviews social scientists about their research. She also hosts the Matrix podcast.

Her current book project, Checkerboarding the Desert, examines the afterlives of the railroad checkerboard in eastern San Bernardino County for Native American tribes and environmental conservation. She's also at work on a history of dirt bikes on public lands in California. Her public-facing writing focuses on environmental and local history in California. 

Find her on Twitter, where she posts extremely periodically: @juliasizek