Mark Ortiz (he/him) is an assistant Professor of Geography and faculty member within the Institute of Energy and the Environment and Social Science Research Institute at Penn State University. His research interests span youth climate and environmental politics, social movement studies, community-engaged research, the U.S. Southeast, multimedia storytelling, and creative geographies. His current work utilizes multigenerational storytelling to chronicle community environmental memory in Birmingham, Alabama and North Carolina. Mark is the Creator and Director of the STAGES Lab (Storytelling across Generations, Environments, and Societies) at Penn State, a platform that aims to foster multigenerational environmental research, education, storytelling, and policy-facing work. His research is published or forthcoming in Climate and Development, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, GeoHumanities, Children’s Geographies, Environmental Education Research, cultural geographies, and Annals of the American Association of Geographers among other academic and public-facing venues.

Project Title: Chronicling Environmental Memory and Grassroots Socioecological Resilience Strategies in the U.S. Southeast: A Community-Engaged Book Project in North Carolina

Abstract: This book project is a story-driven examination of how communities across the state of North Carolina are working to build resilience to the impacts of climate change as they intersect with the legacies of environmental inequality prevalent across the U.S. South. Based on narrative interviews with environmental justice leaders across the state, community-based participatory research with grassroots organizations, and the application of innovative participatory arts methods such as poetic inquiry and community puppetry, this book project applies creative geographies and multimedia storytelling methods to advance place-based and community-engaged scholarship on environmental resilience.