Dr. Ingrid Waldron

Dr. Ingrid Waldron is a Professor and the HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program at McMaster University, the Founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ). She was recently selected by Environment and Climate Change Canada to be a consultant on the first-ever National Environmental Justice Strategy. 

Dr. Waldron’s research focuses on the health and mental health impacts of social inequalities and discrimination in Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities, including mental illness, dementia, COVID-19, environmental racism, and climate change inequities. Her research and advocacy on mental illness experienced by Black women in the Halifax Regional Municipality played a significant role in the creation of the Sisterhood Initiative, the first health service for Black women in Nova Scotia, which launched in 2022.

Her research and advocacy, as well as her 2018 book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities and her 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name have played a pivotal role in creating awareness about and addressing cases of environmental racism. In 2015, with former politician Lenore Zann, she co-developed the first environmental racism private members’ bill for Nova Scotia, Bill 111, and in 2020, the first federal environmental racism private members’ bill, Bill C-230. Bill C-230 was re-introduced as Bill C-226 in February 2022 by Elizabeth May and is currently in the Senate awaiting a vote. If it passes, it will be the first environmental racism and justice law legislation in Canada. 

Dr. Waldron has received numerous awards for her research, book, and community advocacy, including the 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women Award, the Education and Thought Leadership Award from Clean50 for her ENRICH Project, the Leadership in Advocacy Award from Research Canada, and the President’s Research Excellence Award for Research Impact from Dalhousie University, to name a few. Dr. Waldron is currently writing her next book, From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Tracing the Impacts of Racial Trauma in Black Communities from the Colonial Era to the Present.

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