Carlota Houart’s participation in the Deep Commons Conference 2022

On 27 October, Carlota Houart, PhD researcher at the Riverhood project, participated in the Deep Commons Conference 2022 as part of the panel “Towards multispecies justice”, to present her research proposal, Listening to the Voices of the River: Towards Multispecies Justice in Water Governance Processes. The Deep Commons Conference theme this year was “Cultivating Ecologies of Solidarity and Care beyond Capitalism, Patriarchy, Racism and the State”, and more information about the program and the variety of panel, workshop, and roundtable contributions from researchers, activists, artists and others around the globe can be found here: https://www.deepcommons.net/conference-2022.

Carlota’s presentation focused on the emergent concept and research program of multispecies justice, and how it can be applied to the study of the interests and practices of social movements and local communities mobilizing to defend and restore river ecosystems. By reflecting on recent experiences with preliminary fieldwork in the context of the Dutch river Maas, Carlota also pointed to a few ethical questions surrounding research on human/non-human relations that might be central for any activist researcher working on topics of justice (especially those that entangle and intersect human and other-than-human lives).