Subsistence Fishing, Environmental Risk, and Environmental Knowledge for Sustainable Urban Food Systems in Pittsburgh, PA
This research considers urban waterways–especially rivers–as a food common. In doing so, it seeks to better understand the ways that people engage with rivers as a form of urban subsistence, how they understand and navigate risks associated with historical and contemporary pollution and contamination, and how polycentric forms of urban waterway governance might mitigate these risks.
Suburbanization and the Environmental Justice Implications of (Sub)urban Infrastructure
This project looks at the history and presence of suburbanization in Broward County, Florida, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and the New York City Metropolitan Area and specifically the infrastructure built to support suburbs and exurbs. It looks at these infrastructure projects (including both canals and highways) as sites of ongoing but underexamined environmental injustice and as part of a larger settler colonial logic embedded in the urban fabric.
Anti-colonial Environmental Histories in British Guiana
This research seeks to better understand the ways that infrastructure and water management law were used to create and maintain colonial power in British Guyana from 1834 to 1965. How did colonial authorities navigate anti-colonial sentiments and how did the colonized attempt to pre-figure a non-colonial world through their use of colonial systems? (Note: This project is ending and all work will be completed by August 2025.)