In this spotlight, Iris Chen highlights her participation in an upcoming session at the Park Pride Parks and Greenspace Conference in Atlanta. The conference brings together park stewards to discuss community-led stewardship and ecological resilience across metropolitan greenspaces. Here's what she told the department: 

“This March, I am co-convening a session with a group of park stewards at the Park Pride Parks and Greenspace Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Titled ‘Connecting Heartbeats: Fostering Community and Ecological Resilience across Metro Atlanta Greenspaces,’ this interactive session focuses on building a city-wide green network through community members sharing stories of cultivating healthier and more just waterways, forests, and greenspaces. After the conference, we will continue this effort through sharing stories of socio-ecological resilience with a broader public. 

This session arises from my ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Atlanta that thinks through how histories of the forced removal of Muscogee and Cherokee people, enslavement and ongoing forced labor practices, and the racialization of Southern space shape urban forests. Furthermore, I am interested in how community members reckon with these histories in their active and ongoing forest stewardship work. Through this session and our future story-sharing platform, I integrate public-facing advocacy and collaborative projects into my ethnographic scholarship and research.” 

Learn more about the annual Park Pride Parks & Greenspace Conference