MdM Keynote Speaker Series 2024: "Seeing rivers otherwise: Learning through and with Critical Cartography", by Daniele Tubino de Souza

We are pleased to announce that Daniele Tubino de Souza, from Wageningen University, will give a seminar on “Seeing rivers otherwise: Learning through and with Critical Cartography”. After the seminar, the documentary Diary of Travelling Rivers will be screened.

MdM Seminar Series 2024


Title: “Seeing rivers otherwise: Learning through and with Critical Cartography”

Speaker:  Daniele Tubino de Souza, Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University.

Date: Friday, 13^th of December 2024
Time: from 10:30 to 12:30 
Venue: Room Z/033
 

Program

• 10.30 – 11.20: Talk: Seeing rivers otherwise: Learning through and with Critical Cartography + Q&A
• 11.20 – 11.30: break
• 11.30 – 12.30: Screening of the documentary “Diary of Travelling Rivers” + Q&A

Talk: Seeing rivers otherwise: Learning through and with Critical Cartography

Counter-maps have become an increasingly important practice to support social movements to claim their rights and take action against practices that disrupt alternative ways of relating to territories, especially in the field of water governance. However, we should not assume that these maps are automatically emancipatory. The way people learn and how power and knowledge are negotiated during the making of the map is crucial. In this presentation, Daniele looks at how counter cartography can benefit from insights from the field of critical pedagogy. From that perspective, rather than focusing on the results of critical cartography, she looks at the potential for learning, change, and action in the mapping process itself. This topic is explored in the context of grassroots movements that focus on water, as it is a key issue in promoting fair and sustainable river practices.
 

Daniele Tubino de Souza is a landscape architect and holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her research articulates knowledge from the fields of environmental and social sciences with a focus on action-oriented research methods, aiming at theoretical and practical contributions to generate sustainable outcomes.  She is particularly interested in understanding social, transformative and transgressive learning processes enacted by grassroots initiatives within riverine contexts. She is currently a postdoc researcher at Water Resources Management Group and part of the coordinating team of Riverhood and River Commons projects (movingrivers.org).

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 About the “Diary of Travelling Rivers” documentary

Travelling Rivers is a collective counter-mapping initiative that aims to illustrate and mobilise the knowledge, imaginaries and conflicts around rivers that are generally hidden, but perceived and experienced daily by riverine communities. From April to June 2023, fishing and peasant communities, social movements and activists-artists and researchers from the Riverhood and River Commons projects engaged in local counter-mapping workshops on four rivers in Colombia and two in Ecuador: the Magdalena, La Miel, Bogotá and, Sumapaz and the Guargalla y Alao rivers. By taking the mapping workshops and the maps themselves from one context to another, the different experiences and struggles were woven together, connecting stories, concerns, debates and movements. Rivers travelled and promoted transnational solidarity. This experience is portrayed in the award-winning movie Diary of Travelling Rivers. This project follows two five-year research projects Riverhood and River Commons (movingrivers.org) dedicated to reviving rivers, promoting river co-governance, and advancing new water justice movements. 

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