As part of our China India Scholar-Leaders initiative, we currently have our eight CISLI Fellows in New York City for their month-long residency. Over the course of the residency the Fellows have been developing their research projects for the next two years, getting to know each other, exploring the city, and honing their research and methods skills. As part of the residency we have taken the Fellows on a number of field trips to learn more about New York City, its history and culture, and a range of important current issues connected to the overall theme of the initiative–prosperity and inequality.

One of those recent field trips included a boat tour of the Hudson River and East River, with a particular focus on issue of urban waterways, pollution, environmental conservation and human-nature systems. The trip included a tour up the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek, both notorious for their pollution and industrial activities. Prior to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Newtown Creek area of Greenpoint in Brooklyn was the worst toxic oil spill site in the country, having been home to some of the earliest industrial oil refining operations, as well as numerous other toxic business activities, including dry cleaning chemical processing and petroleum refining.

The toxic river tour was led by two New School faculty Jeni Wightman and Martina Kohler, both of whom teach at the Parsons School of Design. Below are a few highlight photos from their exploration of the New York waterways.