The URI Center for Humanities awarded Marine Affairs Doctoral Candidate, Alanna Casey, a Graduate Research Grant to support her dissertation research. The award will enable Alanna to conduct research at various archives in California, Florida, and Virginia during the summer and fall of 2016. When informing Alanna of the award, Center for the Humanities Director, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, underscored the committee’s excitement in reviewing an application from a Marine Affairs student conducting interdisciplinary and applied research, grounded in the humanities.

Alanna’s project, “Incorporating Historical Perspective into Climate Change Assessments of Coastal Cultural Heritage” investigates two key questions: first, how did past societies perceive weather variability in their coastal environment? And second, how can historical perspectives and patterns of environmental use be incorporated into climate change vulnerability assessments of cultural resources, such as historic forts, ships, and archaeological sites? The research assesses experts’ claims that the actions and adaptations made by past cultures in coastal areas can be used to inform our current responses to climate change.

In order to address the questions, this project will seek first person, historical perspectives in archival documents that describe the environmental conditions in three National Parks: Gulf Islands National Seashore, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, and Colonial National Historic Park. Alanna plans to build on existing studies on the vulnerability of cultural resources to climate change by incorporating a historical perspective from archival data into climate change vulnerability assessments. This research uses qualitative and interpretive humanities methods to assess the changing uses and meanings of historical and cultural resources overtime, and questions how their adaptive nature can be used in climate change planning.