Unsettling Water Politics? Digitalising Water in China and Beyond

This workshop aims to explore the complex impacts of digital innovations and transformations on water and environmental governance in Chinese and global context. By bringing together insights from diverse contexts around the world- particularly from the Global South- we hope to foster a rigorous discussion on how digitalization is reshaping water governance and management, and to explore the significant social, political, ecological, and ethical dimensions of this transformation (Hoolohan et al., 2021; Amankwaa et al., 2021; Hsu et al., 2020), and critically examine the conceptual frameworks and empirical cases scholars employ to interpret these shifts.

Attendees:Dr. Qinghong Xu, Dr. Godfred Amankwaa, Caixia Man, Dr. Cecilia Alda Vidal, Yuzong Chen

Qinhong Xu is a postdoctoral researcher with the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She completed her PhD with the Water Resources Management Group at the same university. Her research interests include political ecology, governmentality, and science and technology studies in water and environmental governance. Currently, her postdoctoral work focuses on the digitalization of nature in China and its geopolitical implications.

Godfred Amankwaa is an applied researcher currently working as an Environmental Social Scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, an MSc degree from the University of Oxford and has vast experience in the policy, utility and development space, undertaking transdisciplinary research as well as managing and consulting for over six years on projects and programmes for institutions such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Godfred’s overarching research interests and expertise revolve around water management, environmental risk governance, digital innovations, sustainability, and questions related to (urban) infrastructures and sustainable development.

Caixia Man is a PhD candidate at University of East Anglia and Southern University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on irrigation governance, agrarian change, and China politics.

Cecilia Alda Vidal is a postdoctoral researcher at IMAGINE Adaptation at BC3. In the past, she has conducted in-depth research in Southern African cities, examining the everyday practices and micropolitics of water and sanitation service provision. Her work challenges formal narratives about how infrastructures function and for whom they work. As part of this, she has explored the gendered and labour dimensions of water service digitization, particularly through pre-paid kiosk systems in low-income neighbourhoods, which she will be discussing in this session.

Yuzong Chen is a PhD researcher at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include water governance, environmental policies, techno-politics, and environmental geography in China.

Agenda

Welcome：2 mins

Sparkling Presentation：30 mins (5-6 mins each presenter)

Roundtable：30 mins

Closing：2 mins

More enquiries are welcome send an email to:

Dongyang Mi

[email protected]

Mengyao Li

mengyaol7@student.
unimelb.edu.au

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Event Venue

Online