This lab session is split in two parts.
In the first part lab member Dženeta Hodžić will give insights into her freshly started PhD “Social dimensions of groundwater: Practices of (un-)regulated resource management in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina” in the research project “regulate. Regulation of Groundwater in Telecoupled Social-Ecological Systems” .
In the second part Fotini Takirdiki will present her plans for a PhD project proposal on “Knowledge transfer at universities under anthropocenic conditions”.
The lab session will take place via Zoom. The link will be circulated on Monday around noon. If you wish to participate, please drop a short mail to patrick.bieler@hu-berlin.de. If you wish to read the PhD proposals in advance, please contact the presenters directly (see their announcements).
Political Ecologies of Knowledge in the Anthropocene. An Ethnographic Inquiry into New Modes of Knowledge Production in Hybrid Spaces (PhD project; Fotini Takirdiki)
New knowledge spaces have an important role to play in coping with the Anthropocene. In that context there are new initiatives evolving that develop novel formats of knowledge production and that are hybrid; in a sense that they lie at the intersection of disciplines, sectors and institutions beyond the divide between nature and culture. Academic places such as the university but also non-university institutes strive for structural changes and explore new ways in order to generate transformative knowledge. The aim of this PhD project is to ethnographically study hybrid spaces as experimental sites for new modes of knowledge production in the Anthropocene in order to understand what kind of knowledge is being produced, if societal participation is being enabled through which differences can be bridged and how socioecological learning processes can be fostered. The project will question if an opening of knowledge production is actually happening and which infrastructures influence this mediation process. For this purpose, I will observe practices of knowledge transfer between science and society at three selected field sites in a comparative study. The research will be situated in the field of knowledge anthropology with intersections to STS and political ecology and will include findings from critical pedagogy. I am currently in the phase of applying for scholarships (so at the very beginning of the PhD process) and therefore I would like to present the main structure, research design and goal of my dissertation project. If you want to read the exposé that is written in German, please send me a mail and I will happily forward it to you: ftakirdiki@yahoo.de
Social dimensions of groundwater: Practices of (un-)regulated resource management in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Dženeta Hodžić)
In light of anthropogenic drivers of climate change, groundwater management and concomitant groundwater use need to be closely examined to propose sustainable solutions. Groundwater is a crucial resource not only for drinking water but also for industry, agriculture and ecosystems, which may spark increased resource competition and poses a challenge to (integratively) govern groundwater complexities. Locally, different forms of water governance and land use practices increasingly interact with national and transnational regulatory frameworks, such as the EU (Ground-)Water Framework Directive (WFD). By deploying an ethngoraphic approach, I aim to study translocally/-nationally interlinked processes of groundwater management and use in two case studies in the Western Balkans, namely in the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The case studies will be centred around the shared transboundary aquifer Una/Pljesevica, which directly links the Plitvice Lakes National Park (Croatia) and the city of Bihać (Bosnia-Herzegovina). The overall aim is to address questions of how groundwater is understood by local communities as well as institutions, how groundwater is rendered manageable and what EU (WFD) policy effects can be observed in an EU/non-EU member state. The research design is informed theoretically by STS-inspired approaches that addresses research themes such as policy, knowledge and infrastructure. This PhD project is part of the BMBF-funded junior research group “regulate – Regulation of groundwater in telecoupled social-ecological systems” at the Institute for social-ecological research (ISOE), Frankfurt am Main. I’m only at the beginning of my PhD and currently in the phase of further sharpening my theoretical lens, further conceptualising the research design and defining the proposed case studies. Those who are interested in the overall project are invited to peruse our web presences: http://regulate-project.eu/ and https://www.isoe.de/en/research/junior-research-group-regulate/. If you would like to read the PhD proposal, feel free to contact me: hodzic@isoe.de
