Building Climate Resilience via Collective Memory: An Oral History of Flooding in Waltham, MA
Project Overview
Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory is an oral history project that will record experiences of urban flooding in Waltham, MA. The stories that we collect will be made available to residents through an easy-to-use interactive mapping tool and shared at community-wide events.
The overarching goal of this project is to contribute to a more resilient, just, and equitable future for all residents of Waltham. Our project emphasizes the importance of residents’ voices in discussions about flood risk assessment and mitigation strategies. We believe that learning directly from Waltham residents about their experiences of flooding is a way to build community resilience. By making these stories publicly accessible, we hope to create a resource that will bring Waltham residents together – across generations and identities – to collectively respond to the challenges of climate change.
Our project will begin with in-depth oral history interviews with forty residents of environmental justice communities, i.e. geographic areas that face disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and risks, due to historical or systemic factors like race, income, or social inequality. We aim to interview twenty residents who live in the Hardy Pond area and twenty who live in proximity to the formerly industrial areas near the Charles River.
This initiative is supported by a grant from Mass Humanities and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Project Team
Jack Meyerhoff Chair in American Environmental Studies
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Professor of Sociology and Health: Science, Society, and Policy (HSSP)
Director, Vic '63 and Bobbi Samuels '63 Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation (COMPACT)
Professor of English
Director, Mandel Center for the Humanities