Reposted from wur.nl
Are you interested in understanding how different actors know, value and strive to shape river systems in diverging ways? Do you want to learn specifically about approaches for enlivening rivers that are promoted by grassroots water justice movements? Then this could be the perfect PhD opportunity for you!
To further explore how new water justice movements (NWJMs) struggle for enlivening rivers, the Water Resources Management (WRM) group invites applications for four 4-year long PhD projects. We seek highly motivated candidates who want to engage with rivers, environmental justice and social movements in a transdisciplinary, cross-cultural and collaborative way. As candidate, you will study the drivers and inspirations for these emergent approaches and movements, and find out how they translate and promote their ideas transnationally.
Notwithstanding rivers’ fundamental importance for social and natural well-being, riverine systems are dammed and polluted, under great stress worldwide. Expert ontologies and epistemologies have become cornerstones of powerful hydraulic-bureaucratic administrations. Recently, worldwide, a large variety of NWJMs have proliferated that view rivers as a living entity that intertwines nature and humans ecologically, culturally and socioeconomically.
RIVERHOOD is a 5-years project funded by the European Research Council (ERC). It will study, conceptualize and support evolving NWJMs in Ecuador, Colombia, Spain and the Netherlands, developing a new analytical and methodological framework. The central research question is: How do the new water justice movements shape and dynamize riverhood enlivening strategies, institutions and practices, and how can they potentiate radically new scientific and policy approaches for sustainable and equitable water governance?