April 21, 2025
In 2023, Sandra Susan Smith, faculty director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, launched a new research initiative that offers grants to faculty and students to support the development of qualitative research projects about social policy. We are excited to announce the 2025 Malcolm Wiener Center Qualitative Research Grant recipient.
Student Recipient:
Major Eason — A City Under Steam: Understanding Place-Level Responses to Environmental Racism
My ethnographic project primarily analyzes how a predominantly Black town in Southeastern Pennsylvania negotiates its political economy in the shadow of toxic facilities. I ask, (1) What are the mechanisms that have shaped environmental inequality between the town and the rest of the county over time? (2) How is the town racially marginalized, and how does this affect interactions between the community and polluters? (3) How do community members negotiate collective social, political, and economic decisions amongst each other? Understanding how the town negotiates this reality will allow for better scholarship and policy that shapes more just and sustainable visions for the future.
Major Eason is a Sociology PhD student whose research interests revolve around environmental justice and sustainable development. Through multi-level and multi-method scholarship, he broadly examines the question, How does place shape the manifestations of and responses to environmental racism?