DB8: Relational Heritage in Action: Community Agency and Climate Resilience
Tracks
8
| Tuesday, December 1, 2026 |
| 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM |
| RH205 |
Paper / Session Submitter
Dr Betsy Bradley
Adjunct Faculty
Goucher College
Relational Heritage in Action: Community Agency and Climate Resilience
Summary Abstract
This presentation contends that heritage wellbeing must be our overarching goal in climate resiliency work and proposes that heritage communities of practice are necessary to achieve effective work. Understanding place attachment, individual and collective place-based identity, the becoming nature of all places and a range of responses to change are essential additions to our resilience toolkit. A shift from “in perpetuity” thinking to preparing for and managing change must be coupled with a completion of the steps of “collecting” historic places on registers to incorporate decisions about deaccessioning and abandonment. Heritage communities of practice learn and work together and are a means to bring inclusion and expanded agency of affected parties into heritage work. People threatened with major changes should be the ones who decide what to document for their communities and how.
Biographies
Betsy Bradley, PhD, has worked for local governments and as a consultant in heritage work. She has taught in the Goucher College master’s degree program in Historic Preservation for 20 years. She often writes essays pressing for a more relatinoal heritage component in work in the US.
Flynn Larson is a cultural heritage professional based in Northern New Mexico. She specializes in documentation and monitoring of cultural heritage throughout the Intermountain West. Flynn emphasizes community-centered preservation, connecting with people over earthen building conservation and place-based storytelling.
Maria holds a master’s degree in Historic Preservation from Goucher College (2020) and has over 20 years of experience with permitting and environmental regulations in rural Alaska. Maria has a keen interest in community relocation in Alaska because it directly affects the connection to place that evokes nostalgia for home.
Cory J. France is a cultural strategist who currently serve as a historian and architectural historian at New South Associates, where they provide expertise in African American heritage and underrepresented communities. Their work bridges research, partnerships, community care, and critical place-based storytelling, grounded historic preservation, cultural sustainability, and strategic communication.
