| Affiliations: |
DeBakey Executive Research Leadership Program, Center for Heritage Conservation, Center for Housing and Urban Development
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| Project Leader: | Dr. Andrea Roberts aroberts318@tamu.edu Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning |
| Faculty Mentor: | |
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Meeting Times:
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Team Meetings 330-5 pm once a month, and biweekly meetings with undergraduates |
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Team Size:
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8 (Team Full) |
| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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We have special opportunities for applicants with advanced computer and communication skills to help support expansion of our mapping platform
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Team Needs:
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Our team needs GIS analysts, community engagement and service-learning project support, team scheduling and logistics, and data management support. We also need an overall computer coding & web design, expert able to construct web portals (enterprise platform) for diverse user types. |
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Description:
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Texas Freedom Colonies Project is an evolving, social justice initiative, which celebrates, researches, and documents historic Black settlements’ landscapes, heritage, & placemaking and grassroots preservation practice. The Project has three core areas of research: Goal #1: Recording and Analyzing Community Placemaking Stories and History through oral history, interviewing, and creative digital storytelling to increase the visibility of disappearing and vulnerable historic black settlements Goal #2: Building an Online Interactive Atlas & Ethnographic Database of historic black settlement locations to produce spatial analysis that helps us understand the ecological vulnerabilities and planning issues facing these endangered communities; also identify patterns of land loss and declining cemeteries and buildings. Goal #3: Develop Evidence-Based Solutions which support historic communities’ resilience: identify grassroots preservation solutions; peer mentorship program; public education and outreach The Project’s current focus is around developing surveys, expanding the capacity of the atlas to host profile pages for communities, and helping communities upload archival data to the website that helps us identify more unmapped settlements. Team members perform Atlas demonstrations, raise awareness of freedom colonies’ existence and relevance to planning, preservation, and architecture. We make these presentations and demonstrations in partnership with local communities, grassroots groups, public agencies, and Tamu research centers. Travel, public speaking, social media, and surveying, digital atlas maintenance, and data management are all our core functions at this time. We also develop peer-reviewed publishable research. |