Writing Workshop: Hydropolitical Geographies: Critical Perspectives on Water in a Changing Climate

In June 2026, team A6 of the Just Transition Center will host an international writing workshop on “Hydropolitical Geographies: Critical Perspectives on Water in a Changing Climate.” The workshop brings together around 20 international scholars from human geography and related disciplines to discuss ongoing research on water governance amid socio-ecological transformations.

Water has become a central site through which the politics of the climate crisis are articulated. It is at once fundamental to human and other-than-human life, while also increasingly at the centre of conflicts over access, control, and distribution. Intensifying hydrological extremes, unsustainable patterns of use, and the relevance of water for energy transitions further highlights its contested yet crucial role . Against this backdrop, the workshop explores how hydrological flows, water infrastructures, and more-than-human relations are rearticulated . Bringing together perspectives from political ecology, hydrosocial research, and more-than-human geographies, it aims to advance conceptual debates on how water is governed, experienced, and contested in a changing climate.

The workshop will feature keynote lectures by Jessica Budds (University of Bonn) and Denisse Roca-Servat (Universidad de Antioquia, Columbia), thematic panels and a field excursion to the Bitterfeld-Wolfen region focusing on “Water and Transformation.”

The workshop is organised by Dr. Larissa Fleischmann & Julia Ostertag (Just Transition Center), and Dr. Tino Petzold (University of Münster / Goethe University Frankfurt).