Dr. Ingrid Waldron is Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program in the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.

She is the founder and director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ERICH Project), the co-founder and co-director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice, and the co-founder of Rural Water Watch.

Dr. Waldron’s research interests include the impacts of anti-Black racism and other forms of discrimination on the health and mental health of Black communities, racial disparities in health and mental health related to COVID-19, dementia, and other illnesses, and the social, political, health and mental health effects of environmental racism and climate change inequities in Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities.

Dr. Waldron partners with racialized communities, community-based organizations, health agencies, government, and academics to conduct research, and to develop legislation, services, programs, and documentary film and other multimedia tools and resources to address health and mental health disparities and promote health equity and environmental and climate justice. For example, her research on Black women’s experiences with mental illness in the Halifax Regional Municipality led to the creation of Nova Scotia Health’s Sisterhood Initiative, the first health service exclusively for Black women in Nova Scotia.

Her research and advocacy on environmental racism in Black and Indigenous communities in Canada led to her co-developing with former politician Lenore Zann the first federal private members environmental racism/justice bill in Canada An Act Respecting the Development of a National Strategy to Assess, Prevent and Address Environmental Racism and Advance Environmental Justice (Bill C-226). On June 13, 2024, the bill was approved at Senate and on June 20 it was given royal assent, becoming the first environmental justice law in Canada. Dr. Waldron is the author of the 2018 book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, which was turned into a 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name and was co-produced by Waldron, actor Elliot Page, Ian Daniel, and Julia Sanderson, and directed by Page and Daniel. Her latest book, From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: Tracing the Impacts of Racial Trauma in Black Communities from the Colonial Era to the Present was published on November 25, 2024. It traces the history of racial trauma experienced by Black communities in Canada, the US and the UK from the colonial era to the present.