Lecture | Blue History Network Graduate Forum
Water governance
- Date
- Tuesday 14 April 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room 2.60
Join a series of seminars putting water at the center of (historical) analysis! Explore new topics and perspectives within broader themes in this rapidly emerging field. Open to all scholars and students
interested in the blue humanities.
Water governance
Managing water, from ensuring clean drinking water to mitigating environmental disasters, has always been a political venture. Given the centrality of water to human existence, the policy choices made have tangible impacts on all levels of society, from the local to the global. And these impacts are rarely felt equally. Hierarchies of power and influence have long histories of facilitating legislation that disproportionately disadvantages marginalized communities, often the ones already most vulnerable to environmental changes. Further, the inherent fluidity of water, and its defiance of neat political and geographical categorizations, make it an unruly entity to govern, especially when policy-makers bring their own stakes to the table. Despite attempts to depoliticize and present water governance as neutral and objective, decisions on water management have always been deeply political, evolving in parallel with the societies they have helped structure. This seminar will consider these political and legal histories of water, tracing the roots of past and present water governance and (in)justice in the face of increasingly global challenges.
Suggested works:
- Braverman, Irus, and Elizabeth R. Johnson, eds. 2020. Blue Legalities : The Life & Laws of the Sea. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Boelens, Rutgerd, Tom Perreault, and Jeroen Vos, eds. 2018. Water Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bolster, W. Jeffrey. 2012. The Mortal Sea : Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
- Saravanan, Velayutham. 2020. Water and the Environmental History of Modern India. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Schmidt, Jeremy J. 2017. Water : Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity. New York: New York University Press.
Blue History Network Graduate Forum
The Blue History Network Graduate Forum is a series of seminars on topics related to blue history, inviting scholars to join an ongoing conversation on key themes within this rapidly emerging field. The fluidity of water as a shared point of reference facilitates new connections and insightful discussions across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and the Graduate Forum aims to incorporate a broad range of perspectives and engage a wider audience. Each session will have an overarching theme and some suggested starting points, but participants are warmly encouraged to draw connections to their own research and interests during the discussions. The Graduate Forum will be hosted at Leiden University, with the option to attend online, and is open to all scholars interested in blue history, whether to share and deepen existing expertise or explore exciting new ways of conceptualizing and working with history.
