WUR events highlight River Commons and Travelling Rivers

On 6 March 2024, PhD Carlota Houart had the opportunity to present the River Commons project at the ‘Wageningen Impact for Sustainable Futures’ event, which brought together several outstanding projects at Wageningen University that have been awarded INREF grants. These projects stand out for their transdisciplinary approaches, integrating academia and society in innovative ways and multiple areas of knowledge. In her speech, Carlota highlighted how the River Commons project has been building transdisciplinary bridges between academia and social movements, environmental organisations, artists, and activist groups to work together to defend rivers. She also highlighted some of the key strengths of the project, such as the use of alternative and creative methodologies to co-create actionable knowledge with grassroots initiatives around rivers for social and environmental impact.

Carlota Houart presenting the River Commons project

Also on 8 March, post-doc Daniele Tubino represented the Travelling Rivers initiative (part of the Riverhood and River Commons projects) at the WUR Research Award in the Transdisciplinary Research of the Year category. In her pitch, Daniele highlighted how the Travelling Rivers initiative follows a radical transdisciplinary path by building entirely on the ideas and knowledge of riverine communities. Travelling Rivers makes ideas about rivers travel and does so through counter-maps created with the help of local artists, that represent alternative visions that can heal our rivers. As she highlighted, these maps integrate diverse knowledge, connect movements around the world, and amplify their power by enabling new transnational networks of solidarity that can influence the creation of new policies for rivers.

Daniele Tubino representing the Travelling Rivers transdisciplinary initiative

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