In a report dated September 4, 2026, MIT News described the Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project, an online repository developed by MIT anthropology professor Christine Walley with the Southeast Chicago Historical Society. The project presents more than 1,100 items from the local historical museum's collection, including clothing, photographs, scrapbooks, news clippings and oral-history materials, alongside documentary videos on industry, labor history and community life.

The report ties the project to the area's steel mills, which once employed 120,000 workers at their peak across a region stretching into Northwest Indiana. It cites objects such as a hard hat used when U.S. Steel's South Works closed in 1992; the plant, which had produced steel since the 1800s, employed about 20,000 people at its peak. The report also recounts the 1937 Memorial Day deaths of 10 workers during a strike protest at Republic Steel, and notes worker-safety concerns persisting in oral histories into the 1960s.

Walley, whose father was a third-generation steelworker, said people often experience history through stories told around family objects and photographs. The report says the project draws on MIT scholar Sherry Turkle's notion of "evocative objects." It was supported in part by MIT, the National Endowment for the Humanities and others.