Tim Stone Presents Paper on Childhood Risk using Keweenaw Time Traveler Data

On Wednesday morning, Time Traveler Timothy Stone, recent graduate of our BS in Sustainability Sciences and Society program (and incoming Industrial Heritage & Archaeology MS student)  presented a paper at the Society for the History of Children and Youth International Conference.  Timothy’s presentation was modelled off a paper that is currently under review which attempts to illuminate the importance of using individual-level records (as we do in the Keweenaw Time Traveler) when studying children’s spaces.  Whereas many researchers use only census locations to examine children’s spaces, we were able to integrate school records as well, giving us a more wholistic understanding of the quality and hazards these students faced every day.  Stay tuned for more updates.

Mary Probovich, an 8th grade student in Washington High School, travelled through some heavily industrialized areas on her way to and from school each day.  In addition, her school was bordered by railroad tracks, and was about 100 meters away from Calumet and Hecla’s Shaft #2.  Despite her home being in a residential location, we predict she experienced some of the harshest built environments throughout the day out of our sample!

Combining the predicted quality of children’s various activity spaces shows much more variation than when scholars simply rely on census locations, which essentially provide a picture of night-time exposure.  This ignores children’s mobility and the fact that they are exposed to hazards as they move throughout the day.