CURRENT PROJECTS
More than Recreation: Reframing coastal fishing access in RI as a food security issue for marginalized ethnic and racial communities.
Collaborating with Melva Trevino (URI, project Principal Investigator) along with an interdisciplinary team of academic partners and project partners representing community based organizations (CBOs) from marginalized ethnic and
racialized (MER) backgrounds, we argue that coastal access in RI needs to be investigated as a food (in)security issue that disproportionately affects members of MER communities. Specifically, we intend center the experiences and knowledge of shore fishers from MER groups to characterize the ways in which MER communities seek to improve their food security and overall well-being by fishing public coastal spaces in RI. Through this research, we anticipate that results from this study can open new, equitable policy opportunities that strategically reduce barriers to coastal access for MER groups, recognize the contributions of locally-caught fish to local and regional food security, and foster local food system resilience by highlighting underutilized species and markets.
Beaches, People and Change on the Rockaway Peninsula
Continuing with ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, participant observation, media analysis) that I began in 2012, first as a research assistant to and now collaborator with Leigh Graham (John Jay College), this project investigates coastal climate adaptation amongst the communities on the Rockaway peninsula. This work contributes to critical discussions on the social sustainability of beaches and socio-historical and socio-environmental histories of the racialization of space as they are produced and reproduced in climate change adaptation efforts. Currently working on developing a book chapter for an upcoming edited volume, Beach Politics (NYU Press, edited by Setha Low)
StewMap Southeast New England
The Southeast New England Program (SNEP) Network is a collaboration between universities, non-profit organizations and consultants whose mission is to empower communities to achieve healthy watersheds, sustainable financing, and long-term climate resilience through management of stormwater and restoration projects in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Many non-profits, stewardship groups, and local institutions work day-in and day-out in the region’s watersheds and shorelines. Working with water, one is constantly reminded how everything flows together, how regional and local efforts can be more than the sum of parts. Through stewardship mapping, the links between these efforts become better known, partnerships can be better supported, and new ones fostered in an effort to enhance the social infrastructure underlying stormwater management and restoration.
Growing local interest in understanding environmental social networks, along with a funding opportunity from SNEP catalyzed a partnership between RISD, Brown University, EPA’s Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division through the ORISE fellowship program, and thirteen other members of the SNEP Network, led by the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University of Southern Maine to implement STEW-MAP in the Southeast New England region.
The STEW-MAP SNE survey was launched in Fall 2020 and closed in June, 2021 developing new outreach protocols to work across municipal and state boundaries. The team worked with a team of RISD and Brown research assistants to conduct the initial survey as well as three rounds of alter surveys resulting in a high response rate. In addition to the STEW-MAP survey, they collected data about how many of the responding organizations have been impacted by COVID-19. They asked questions about how their capacity, public engagement and ability to perform direct stewardship shifted during the pandemic. SNEP built on the work of Springfield STEW-MAP to refine online data tools using ESRI’s Survey123.
The STEW-MAP SNE team has produced a number of products for public dissemination. More about the STEW-MAP SNE project and methods, as well as products that include webinar recordings, reports and more are available at: http://snepnetwork.org/stewardship-mapping/. Included below are links to the dashboard and data downloads. The purpose of the STEW-MAP SNE dashboard is to provide stewardship organizations, municipalities, researchers, and the general public with information about environmental groups that work in the Southeast New England Program region, where they work (their turf) and their knowledge and funding networks in the region.
PAST PROJECTS
Place Disturbance Above and Below the Water: Bay values and the Construction of Power Plant Cooling Towers
This interdisciplinary and collaborative research project with Dr. Aaron Ley (Political Science, University of Rhode Island) and Dr. Katherine Lacasse (Psychology, Rhode Island College) investigates the place disruptive interpretations of residents and users of Mt. Hope Bay. The goal of this mixed-methods research project (survey, interviews and media analysis) was to learn about interpretations of large scale energy infrastructure (closed cycle cooling towers) and resultant support or conflict with the construction of the towers.
