Dustin Meier is an environmental historian interested in the ways in which working-class and minority populations have historically encountered nature. His book manuscript examines the evolution of summer camping programs directed by urban reformers and professional social workers from the Progressive Era through the 1980s. His first peer-reviewed journal article was published in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in 2023. It analyzed the summer camping programs which urban reformers created for working-class children in the early twentieth century in cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest. The article argues that summer camping exemplified the environmental agenda of reformers in the Progressive Era, an important precursor to modern-day environmentalism.