For this iteration of this semester’s CEH TALK series, we welcome Gabrielle Fenton who is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Gabrielle will be a visiting student with CEH from early April to start July this year.

At this event, Gabrielle will introduce us to her fascinating project, examining the sociality of landscape water levels and the wetness of grasslands in the Scheldt’s estuary in Flanders. A detailed presentation abstract will follow in time, but for now you can read more about Gabrielle’s PhD project below.

As always, the event is open to everyone, and we hope to see a lot of you there!

Hydrosociality in the Grasslands of the Scheldt’s Estuary 
Around the Scheldt’s estuary (Flanders, Belgium), recent droughts contrast with a history of water abundance. This thesis explores the dairy grasslands of the tidal river and their entanglement in a locally specific set of hydrosocial relations. In particular, the project focuses on the grasslands’ water level as it is produced and narrated by three stakeholder groups: farmers, environmental organisations and local waterboards. By following these groups as they tend to the grasslands and navigate flood risks, increasing water scarcity and shifting environmental policies, my research attempts to unpack the wetness of the grasslands. This research builds on Krause and Strang’s (2016) proposition to think relationships through water and is located at the interface between the fields of political ecology, anthropology of climate change, and an anthropology of agrarian worlds.