Hello! I’m Robert, and I’m a program evaluator based in San Diego, California. I have experience winning money for research and knowing what it takes to evaluate and improve non-profit programm
Education:
The University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D. American Studies
New York University, M.A. American Studies
Contact:
rboxford at protonmail dot com
Academic CV and references available upon request.
Toxic Tour in Houston, Texas
Community advocate Sister Elizabeth explains the many hazard signs seen on the road in fracking country. San Antonio, Texas.
Roadside frack water near Karnes County, Texas.
In 2013, I began researching a project on the social effects of fracking in Texas. I was born and raised in Texas and a few members of my family were involved in the early Texas oil boom at the turn of the twentieth century. I grew up with an appreciation of this history but the climate crisis and the health hazards of fracking, the new de facto method of oil and gas extraction, compelled me to learn about not just the community health effects of drilling, but also how people of all kinds of political persuasions, class identifications, and racial identities were skeptical of this new era of the carbon economy and what they wanted to do in order to make positive environmental change in a place where oil is synonymous with the state.
Through six years’ worth of background research, identifying and interviewing contacts, and attending group meetings in three different field sites around the state, I encountered the oil and gas geography in the field, culled through legal, engineering, economic, and political data about fracking, and wrote a book-length dissertation about my findings. I even rode a fracking “ride” in a museum in Houston. I found how people all around the state wanted to have a greater say in their health and safety from fracking, how the revolving door of oil and gas industry with Texas politics creates near impossible barriers to fracking regulation, how state institutions are entangled with the carbon economy that provides a social license to pollute, and how grassroots activists in both red and blue counties organize to stop drilling, pipelines, and refineries from impacting their communities.
My contacts’ recommendations were broadly similar. They wanted regulation. More conservative communities wanted the fracking industry to better monitor and design their machinery for their safety. People of color called for greater state and local intervention in attempts to end environmental racism. Nearly all of my contacts were concerned about the extent to which their protests were policed and monitored, and at times they did not feel safe advocating for themselves or their communities. More liberal community members questioned the idea of a strong, independent fossil fuel economy, while more conservative people embraced it as a way to prevent other countries from influencing the American economy. Only a few questioned the role of fracking in the age of global climate change. For most, however, all politics are local and their struggles were often literally against the industry next door.