The Repair Lab

The Repair Lab is an interdisciplinary environmental justice research lab based at the University of Virginia. The Lab draws upon the spectrum of required expertise, in and outside of academia, to produce policy-relevant research and programming that foregrounds the experience and material reality of environmental racism, whether measured in degrees, inches of sea-level rise, or other metrics.

Work in the Repair Lab is guided by four main questions:

• What are the historical relationships among race, politics, and the environment and what are their legacies today?
• How does contemporary discrimination manifest in the environment and how can we advance environmental monitoring to better inform this research?
• How do affected populations experience environmental injustice and how do we work together to produce more useful scholarship?
• How and where can citizens most effectively intervene in environmental policymaking?

Current Work

Recently, the Repair Lab has focused on the environmental justice issue of coal dust in two predominantly Black communities in Southeastern Virginia: Lambert’s Point, Norfolk, VA and East End, Newport News, VA.

In addition to the creation of this archive, the Repair Lab also created a documentary podcast on the coal dust in Hampton Roads called Crosswinds.

Past Work

Wading Between Two Titans

Wading Between Two Titans is a new podcast from The Repair Lab about place, race, and power in the time of rising tides. A limited series investigating climate gentrification and sea-level rise, the podcast asks: as sea level rises and shorelines shrink, who gets to stay, who has to leave, how did we get here, and what can be done?

Main Street Speaks

Main Street Speaks covers rural news, politics, and history from the perspective of three UVA undergraduate students from the Northern Neck of Virginia. Past episodes have covered local elections, food insecurity, rural education, and much more. The Repair Lab sponsored a series of episodes covering environmental justice in rural areas.

Visiting artist workshop: Augmented Body in the Landscape

Augmented Body in the Landscape developed new pathways to experience the relationship between our bodies and the places we inhabit, and the ways that technology changes that relationship. The work was created by Adrian Wood in collaboration with students of Katie Schetlick’s “Performing the Environment(s)” class at UVA on March 14, 2023

Student Creative Work

The Repair Lab is funding creative projects in a variety of media by University of Virginia undergraduate students. Awards are $500 with an additional $500 available for project materials and expenses. Awardees will have 12 weeks to complete their projects and may reapply for funding to expand their work in the future. Themes can include, but are not limited to, sea-level rise and environmental racism, resistance to pollution and toxic environments, environmental justice in Virginia and other places, storms, flooding and climate catastrophe, and imagining equitable futures. Projects can be either nonfiction audio storytelling, including podcasts and/or oral histories, and/or creative works, media, and art pieces, such as fiction audio works, video pieces, social practice workshops, and performances.

People

Kim Fields, Co-Director

Kim Sudderth, Environmental Justice Fellow

Adrian Wood, Multimedia Producer

Sally Pusede, Co-Director

Akirah Epps, Researcher

Lathaniel Kirts, Practitioner in Residence