Rivers of the Anthropocene brings together scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers to spark interdisciplinary discussion about humans and their freshwater environments
80% of the world’s population is under the imminent threat of water insecurity and biodiversity loss. These stresses on the environment threaten nearly every person on the planet and have the potential to lead to catastrophic disease, hunger, and warfare.
This problem is one of the most pressing challenges of this century, and it cannot be solved by creative technological or policy solutions alone. It requires a multidisciplinary approach and set of solutions premised on an understanding of the complex historical and cultural dynamics between human societies and their environments.
Humans’ relationships with their environments—particularly freshwater environments, such as rivers—are rarely simple. Rivers, for example, often serve as resources upon which humans impose conflicting demands. Most obviously, rivers have served as both sources of clean water and as sinks for domestic and industrial waste. Often, the consequences of human use is unintended and unanticipated, and, importantly, these consequences emerge from multi-local activities which have complex roots in disparate political, economic, social, and cultural systems and practices.
Over the past 250 years, the impact of humans on river ecologies has been profound. Population growth, fossil fuels, global commerce, and industrial chemical processes have combined to amplify and accelerate the environmental consequences of human development. Human migrations have been accompanied by the decline of native species and the introduction of exotics. Agricultural runoff and factory emissions have transformed river ecologies far away from the point of pollution. And, a combination of dredging, building levees and locks, and wetlands development, have altered habitats and stressed ecosystems.
Rivers of the Anthropocene brings together scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers to spark interdisciplinary discussion about humans and their freshwater environments—discussions in which specialists can speak across disciplinary and professional boundaries so that the methods and scholarship of each field informs the others. The Rivers of the Anthropocene Research Network recognizes that only by bringing together our areas of expertise—by bridging the arts, humanities, human sciences, earth sciences—are we likely to discover sustainable solutions to the complex environmental problems that we face in the 21st century.
Rivers of the Anthropocene Network
Project Director
Kelly, Jason M., Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Associate Professor of History at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Advisory Team
Berry, Helen, Professor of History in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Large, Andy, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Scarpino, Phil, Director of the IUPUI Public History Program and Professor of History at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Project Network Participants
Albritton Jonson, Fredrik, Associate Professor of British History, Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and the College Social Sciences at University of Chicago, USA
Aldred, Oscar, Research Assistant in Archaeology in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Allan, Rebecca, New York based artist and Head of Education at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, USA
Bhaduri, Anik, Director of the Global Water System Project at the Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, University of Bonn, Germany
Carter, Timothy, President of Second Nature, USA
Dannenmaier, Eric R., Professor of Law, Dean’s Fellow and Grimes Fellow, and Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Indianapolis USA
Deane-Drummond, Celia, Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, USA
Dwyer, Owen J., Associate Professor of Geography at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Edgeworth, Matt, Senior Archaeological Investigator at English Heritage (Cambridge) and
University of Leicester Honorary Research Fellow in Archaeology, United KingdomEllis, Erle C., Associate Professor of Geography & Environmental Systems at the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA
Evans, Tom, Co-Director of the Vincent and Eleanor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University and Professor of Geography at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Filippelli, Gabriel, Professor of Earth Sciences and Director of the Center For Urban Health at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Hale, Alex, Archaeological Projects Manager, Clyde River Project: Source to Sea, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, United Kingdom
Hayman, Eleanor, Affiliate of the Rachel Carson Center at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Kane, Stephanie C.,Professor, Department of International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Lubinski, Kenneth, Fish and Wildlife Biologist at the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, United States Geological Survey, USA
Mabika, Hines, Senior Research Associate of the Faculty of Medicine at Bern University, Switzerland
Marx, Sina, Research Associate for the Water, Energy and Food Security Group withinthe Global Catchment Initiative, Global Water System Project at the Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, University of Bonn, Germany
McDonald, Fiona,
Meybeck, Michel, Senior Scientist at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris, France
Miss, Mary, New York based artist and Director of the City as Living Laboratory
Morlock, Scott, Deputy Director at United States Geological Survey Indiana Water Science Center
Newman, Caron, Research Assistant in Archaeology in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Director and Professor of Resources Management at the Institute for Environmental Systems Research at the University of Osnabrück, Germany and Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
Secchi, Silvia, Assistant Professor of Agribusiness Economics at Southern Illinois University
Syvitski, James, Executive Director of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System at University of Colorado, Boulder and Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
Thornton, Nigel, Director of Agulhas Applied Knowledge, United Kingdom
Turner, Sam, Professor of Archaeology in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Vörösmarty, Charles, Presidential Professor in the Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York and Director of the CUNY Environmental Crossroads Initiative
Williams, Mark, Professor of Palaeobiology in the Department of Geology at Leicester University, United Kingdom
Zalasiewicz, Jan, Reader in Geology in the Department of Geology at Leicester University, United Kingdom
Consultants
Crumley, Carole, Director of IHOPE at Uppsala University, Sweden and Professor of Anthropology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Lamb Kozenski, Kathy, Executive Director of Geography Educators’ Network of Indiana
Institutional Affiliations
Center for Urban Ecology at Butler University
Center for Urban Health at IUPUI