The Texas Timeline Project: An Introduction
About Our Project
From state-sponsored climate change denial to the rollback of landmark environmental policies established under the Obama Administration, the recent past has held unprecedented changes for the environment. The Texas Timeline Project is a multimedia endeavor showcasing and contextualizing environmental policy legislation enacted from 2015–2021 specifically as it relates to Texans. Our project aims to emphasize the narrative of environmental policy changes under the Trump administration and the way that loosening regulations have helped shape the environmental landscape Texans inhabit.
Structurally, our project will be formatted as an interactive timeline that users can scroll through, with environmental policy changes highlighted over time. Within the timeline, users will be able to dive deeper into the differing consequences of politics by interacting with visualizations, podcast snippets, and interviews with scholars and Texans who were impacted. In order to achieve the large goals of our project, we also aim to synthesize information that has already been reported upon to ensure that our project is as well-rounded as possible.
All three members of our project will focus on research and reporting, using our individual strengths to ensure that the project remains engaging. Evan’s reporting will focus on photojournalism, telling stories through photos of the environment. Alyssa’s reporting will rely on written journalism, interviewing people within academia and ensuring that their research and work is understood by those outside of their field. Grace’s reporting will synthesize and contextualize important events while incorporating unique perspectives from Texans. Using skills that we have available, the three of us also aim to use GIS software to create additional visualizations of green space over time.
About Us
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Alyssa Hiarker is a senior at the University of Texas at Austin where she is majoring in Journalism and Sustainability Studies. Within the project, she aims to create a resource for people to contextualize the role that environmental protection plays within their lives and help individuals restructure their view of politics from an abstract concept to something that has tangible impacts on their life and the world. After she graduates, she plans on attending graduate school for epidemiology, focusing her research on the impact of environmental toxin exposure has on health and the disparities that exist within the field. Her overarching goal is to ensure that her research is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background knowledge or relationship to the field of public health.
Grace Dickens is a senior journalism and geography student at the University of Texas at Austin. Following the drought that began in Texas in 2010, Grace watched as her small, east Texas hometown fought to survive and adapt to its new normal. She plans to go into environmental journalism to tell stories about how everyday people are affected by their environment.
Evan L’Roy is a senior Journalism and RTF student at The University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on photojournalism. Originally from Dallas, TX, Evan has had the opportunity to meet people who depend on the land for their livelihoods, and observe how those same lands have changed over time. With this project, he hopes to help visually demonstrate climate issues and the policies that create them by tying them back to the people that these issues impact.
