Virtual
Aquapolis

Erin Becker-Boris is public historian, public programer and educator from Long Island, NY. Her research interests focus on the convergence of women, labor, and the environment through a global extractive maritime economy. Her work in museums and education grapples with investing local peoples in their resources (historical, environmental, and archaeological) as stakeholders through outreach, museum education, classroom enrichment, and the development of new public programming. She is the co-host of the podcast Scholars Beyond the Tower: Conversations from Our Field. She has written for Gotham Center for New York City History, New York Almanack, Read More Science, H-Net Environment, and the Journal of Urban History.

Liz Canner is an award-winning filmmaker, artist, and writer whose work spans documentary, installation, public art, and interactive media. A pioneer of experimental documentary, she uses emerging technologies to address social and environmental issues, often through collaborative, community-driven projects. Her recent work, Lost City of Mer, is a cross-platform VR and mobile experience presented at the United Nations Climate Summit. Her films have screened internationally and received critical acclaim. She is the founder of Astrea Media, a nonprofit focused on human rights and environmental storytelling. astreamedia.org

Dr. Michael J. Chiarappa’s research, teaching, public programming, and civic engagement focus on the history of America’s built environments and landscapes, American environmental history, American maritime history, and material culture studies. Specializing in public history, he has taught courses in historic preservation, maritime preservation, documentation methods, and cultural resource management, conducting field schools and outreach projects in the Middle Atlantic, New England, Chesapeake, Great Lakes regions, Canada, and the Pacific Islands. Chiarappa is a graduate of the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies, a former board member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and the current co-editor of “Buildings and Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.” He has worked extensively with museums, government agencies, and environmental organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution and National Park Service, and serves as Historian-in-Residence at the Bayshore Center in New Jersey and as a member of the New Jersey State Review Board for Historic Sites.

Dr. Melissa Checker’s research focuses on environmental racism, environmental justice activism, urban sustainability politics, and contemporary environmental movements. Checker’s award-winning book “The Sustainability Myth” examines environmental gentrification and the politics of justice. She is also the author of “Polluted Promises,” which won the Association for Humanistic Sociology Book Award. Checker has co-edited volumes on urban sustainability and cultural activism, authored a number of academic articles and book chapters, and written for popular magazines and newspapers.

Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and the founder and lead artist of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc., a nonprofit art space and residency program on the Shinnecock Reservation dedicated to uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC artists. His work centers Indigenous identity, culture, and the legacies of colonial assimilation, using photography to stage cinematic, otherworldly narratives rooted in Native oral stories, history, and contemporary experience. jeremynative.com

Robin Espinola is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and writer whose work has appeared on PBS, HBO, Lifetime, and Investigation Discovery. Most recently, she served as a senior producer for a six-part documentary series that aired on ABC in fall 2020. In 2019, she received the Eric Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians for The Chinese Exclusion Act, which she produced and co-wrote with Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu. With Burns and Steeplechase Films, she produced historical documentaries for PBS’s American Experience, including The Pilgrims and Death and the Civil War. Espinola has received two Primetime Emmy nominations and a News and Documentary Emmy for research.

Dominika Ksel is an interdisciplinary artist, activist, and educator. Drawing on myth, science, technofeminism, and erased histories, she works with immersive media to evoke the unseen sensorial. Using interactive sculptures, VR/AR, video installations, and sound-based performances, Ksel investigates how technology mediates perception of the self, others, and our social constructs. Her work has been exhibited at MoMa, Bronx Museum, El Museo del Barrio, Museum of Art and Design, Whitney Museum, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Galleria Liberia Bogota, Pioneer Works and P! Gallery.

Kate is a creative producer, experiential director and game designer with a background across live performance, documentary film, multiplayer gaming, filmmaking, dance and interactive storytelling. She co-founded DOTDOT in 2014, an award-winning creative studio focused on generating impact through social and immersive experiences.

Dr. David Soll specializes in environmental history, particularly water management and infrastructure, and is the author of Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply, published by Cornell University. His essay on commuting in New York City appeared in Coastal Metropolis: Environmental Histories of Modern New York City. He is currently completing a comparative history of commuting.

Dr. David Stradling has taught urban and environmental history at the University of Cincinnati since 2000. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996, after having earned a BA and MAT from Colgate University. His most recent book was coauthored with his brother, Richard Stradling. Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland narrates the environmental crisis together with the urban crisis, allowing for a fuller accounting of both. He has also published two books on New York: The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State and Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills. His career began with a study of early efforts to control air pollution and resulted in Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951. He serves as coeditor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series at Temple University Press. He is currently a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.

Curtis Zunigha, an enrolled member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the modern-day descendants of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking. He served his tribe and Indian Country for nearly 40 years including being elected Chief (1994-98) and Cultural Director (2017-2022). Curtis has over thirty years experience in government leadership, community development, multi-media production, and cultural education. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force (1972-1978).

Dr. John Waldman is the leading researcher on the City by the Coast Core Program Area. He is professor of biology at Queens College, City University of New York. Prior to this appointment in 2004, he was employed for 20 years by the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the Joint Program in Evolutionary Biology between the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York. His research interests focus on the ecology and evolution of fishes, particularly diadromous forms, urban aquatic environments, and historical ecology. He also is author of several popular books, including Heartbeats in the Muck: The History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor.