World Cafe
© Regina Hügli
Interdisciplinary collaborations & more-than-human interdisciplinarities
The World Café was a central working format of the festival and was designed as a highly interactive and interdisciplinary space that blends project, research, and practice presentations with joint exploration of key questions. It brought together speakers from various academic disciplines—ranging from anthropology to hydrology—as well as artists and practitioners. The aim was to present work, exchange ideas, and collaboratively explore questions that were relevant to everyone, generating new insights and shared impulses.
Each session began with Flash Talks, where each of the six speakers gave a short two-minute presentation introducing an interdisciplinary water-related project or practice. These Flash Talks were meant to quickly expose all participants to a wide range of approaches and themes. Following the Flash Talks, the format shifts to Small-Group Discussions. Participants rotated through two 20-minute discussion rounds, each centered on one common guiding question moderated by the speakers. These questions have been developed with input from the speakers and have been selected to benefit from input across disciplines, fostering mutual learning and knowledge exchange.
© Regina Hügli
On the first day of the festival, in the first round, speakers focused their queries on 'interdisciplinary collaborations’: What is collaboration? What does it mean to you to collaborate? What do you expect from collaboration? Round 2 explored ‘more than human interdisciplinarities’: What happens in our research if we consider water bodies to be protagonists? What could "researching with" rather than "researching about" rivers mean in practice?
On the second day of the festival, in the first round, speakers pondered on ‘making visible’: Who or what is missing in more than human interdisciplinarities? Round 2 explored about ‘making a difference’: How can we study water bodies differently? Which methods make a difference (in research, policy and action?) What stays with time?
The sessions concluded with a final 20-minute round, called the Harvest Round. Here, key insights from the group discussions were shared with all participants. This was also a space for reflection—participants were encouraged to think about what they have learned and how it connects to their own work. The result was a participatory format where speakers and participants alike contribute to a collective inquiry, reflecting the hybrid nature of water-related knowledge, practice, and collaboration.
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© Regina Hügli
© Regina Hügli
© Regina Hügli
© Regina Hügli
Speakers Bio
Anne Laure
Anne Laure is a sociology researcher at UMR G-EAU, INRAE, in Montpellier (France). She works on our relationship with water, particularly exploring how our coexistence with treated wastewater is framed. Her research is carried out in an interdisciplinary context. It is developed with and by scientists in engineering sciences, in a dialogical movement of reciprocal learning based on a reflective approach.
Bich Tran
Bich is a PhD researcher at IHE Delft. She has a background in Environmental Science, with her postgraduate study in Water Resources Engineering focusing on Earth Observation applications. She holds a bachelor degree in Water - Environment - Oceanography from the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi and a joint master's degree in Water Resources Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL). She has diverse volunteering experiences in environmental and education projects, which led to her interest in interdisciplinary research and applications on sustainable use of water resources. Bich’s PhD project focuses on “Assessing uncertainties in satellite-based estimation of evapotranspiration”, in which she also collaborates with researchers in social science to investigate the use of models in water management and governance.
Bipolar Agency
Bipolar Agency is an artistic and cultural agency that uses storytelling and imagination in experiential and context-specific approaches to support communities in the context of ecological transition. It uses creativity to invent new narratives, open up political imaginations and experiment with sensitive consultation methodologies, drawing on research to evaluate and consolidate its approaches. Its projects bring together residents, communities and scientists around ecological issues (water, coastline, risks, renaturation). Convinced of the power of territorial fictions, Bipolar advocates for a relational ecology based on attachment, listening and care for the environment.
Carolina Dominguez Guzman
Carolina Domínguez-Guzmán is a postdoctoral researcher in PilGrimS (Pathways to Groundwater Sustainability) funded by Future Earth and the Dutch Water and Development Partnership Programme. Carolina brings together scholarship of anthropology and feminist Science and Technology Studies to carry out ethnographical research on the field of (ground) water care, technologies and infrastructures. Carolina Domínguez-Guzmán is currently working for the Water Governance department at IHE Delft.
Desiree Hetzel
Desirée Hetzel’s ethnographic research focuses on how people interact with water in the form of rivers and lakes, as well as water infrastructure, and how these relationships are changing due to climate change. As water sources dry up and water becomes scarcer, new forms of communication are required. In her work, she combines scientific perspectives, everyday knowledge and artistic approaches. Alongside water authorities, citizens and artists, she explores new ways of collaborating. She is currently conducting this research at the TUM Public Science Lab (www.publicscienceslab.org). You can find more information about her work with Pauline Münch at www.anthroposcenes.de, as well as in a joint podcast 'Touching Water' with Márk Somogyvári, in which they speak with various water experts.
Jean Philippe Venot
Jean-Philippe Venot works at IRD, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development. He has an interdisciplinary research background and investigates irrigation and water governance in the global South. His most research interrogates how water researchers make sense and practice the notion of engagement in arenas that ambition to co-produce knowledge for just transformation. This contributes to an emerging field of reseach on reflexivity in sustainability science.
Laura Betancur Alarcon
Laura Betancur Alarcón is a doctoral researcher in ‘Water security for whom? Social and material perspectives on inequality around multipurpose reservoirs in Colombia’. Her research explores hydrosocial relations within the complex interplay of climate extremes, biodiversity loss, energy infrastructures, and armed violence. She integrates insights from human geography, sustainability science and environmental anthropology in her ethnographic and transdisciplinary research. She holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University, Sweden. Over nine years in the environmental sector, she has contributed as a research assistant, writer, lecturer, and journalist across diverse organisations, including academic institutions, media outlets, and international NGOs.
Luke Whaley
Luke Whaley is an IRD Researcher based at G-EAU, a French water research institute. His research engages critically with human-environment relations in the context of global development. Luke is particularly interested in the politics of water, where he works with others to analyse and sometimes challenge the policies, power relations, institutions and systems of meaning that inform and legitimise multi-level governance arrangements, often resulting in unjust and unsustainable outcomes.
Mark Somogyvari
Márk Somogyvári is a postdoctoral researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Márk holds a Master’s degree in geophysics from the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest and a doctoral degree in earth sciences from ETH Zürich, which he obtained in 2017. After his doctoral studies, Márk was a researcher of the Geo.X Young Academy in the numerical mathematics group at University of Potsdam, then he worked as a research assistant in the hydrogeology group of TU Berlin. Márk has experience in applied mathematics and in data science with a special interest in interdisciplinary problems and hydrology. His past works involved the development of tomographic inversion methods for geothermal applications, the characterization of fracture networks in hard rock reservoirs and the application of stochastic numerical methods for aquifer characterization. His current work focuses on making complex models more accessible for wider audiences, with the help of machine learning and statistical tools, and different visualization methods.
Roger Anis
Roger Anis is an Egyptian documentary photographer and visual researcher. He holds a master's degree from the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands, where he focused on water and rivers. A Fine Arts graduate (2008), he began his career in 2010, working with global news outlets such as AP, GettyImages, and The New York Times. His work, exhibited internationally, focuses on underreported social and environmental issues. Roger is also the co-founder of the EverydayNile Initiative, blending photography and filmmaking to expand his visual storytelling across the Nile Basin.
Tomas Uson
Tomás Usón is an anthropologist and geographer working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography at Humboldt University. His research focuses on the temporalities of ecological degradation and socioecological justice. He is also deeply engaged in European-level discussions on the rights of nature, examining the challenges and opportunities this legal framework presents for advancing socioecological justice, while supporting citizen initiatives and artistic projects in this regard.
Salma Abusamra
Salma Abusamra is a Sudanese filmmaker and founder of Ratayen Media Production. Her work explores oral cultures and human connections to the Nile. She contributed to the AquaMuse Project, designing stories about the Blue Nile and its communities, and currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Khartoum Arab Film Festival.
Sumit Viji
Sumit Vij is an Assistant Professor at the Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University & Research. His research focuses on questions of power and politics within the themes of transboundary waters and (peri)urban infrastructure in South Asia, in the times of changing climate and uncertainty.