Dr. Melissa Beresford is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Global Ethnohydrology Studyin the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Beginning in fall 2019, she will be an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at San José State University.

Dr. Beresford is an economic anthropologist focused on human responses to economic inequality and resource insecurity. Her research examines (1) community-based economies, (2) efforts to create alternative (hybrid/non-market) economies, and (3) how such economies can be used (or not) to address resource insecurity. Her doctoral research in Cape Town, South Africa examined how residents in under-resourced environments mobilize entrepreneurial practices to bring about economic transformation. Based on this research, she is currently developing a new project that examines how people rely upon and mobilize entrepreneurship in response to water insecurity.

In her role with the Global Ethnohydrology Study—led by Drs. Amber Wutich and Alexandra Brewis—Dr. Beresford is currently working with fellow HWISE member Dr. Katie Meehan of King’s College London to launch an international study in the summer of 2019 that examines household experiences of plumbing poverty in cross-cultural perspective. The aim of this project is to understand how people respond to and navigate inadequate water infrastructure in their homes and how such processes shape overall experiences of household water insecurity. 

Recent Publications:

Wutich, A., Beresford, M., & Carvajal, C. (2016). Can informal water vendors deliver on the promise of a human right to water? Results from Cochabamba, Bolivia. World Development, 79, 14-24.

Wutich, A. and Beresford, M. The Economic Anthropology of Water. Economic Anthropology. Forthcoming June 2019.

Wutich, A. and Beresford, M. (Eds.). “Water and Economy” special issue of Economic Anthropology. Forthcoming June 2019.

For more information and a list of her current research projects, visit her website at https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/1625318 and on twitter @mhberesford.

Dr. Cassandra L. Workman is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a core member of the Global Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WaSH) Cluster at North Carolina State University. She serves as a steering committee member for the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) – Research Coordination Network (RCN). Dr. Workman served as Site PI for HWISE in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Dr. Workman’s research concerns the biological, social, and psycho-emotional outcomes of household water and food insecurity. Workman’s previous research included the psycho-emotional and social impacts of syndemic water insecurity, food insecurity and HIV/AIDS in Lesotho. Recent research assessed household water and sanitation insecurity in Tanzania, with a focus on cultural understandings of diarrheal diseases and child health. With colleagues from NC State and ECU, Dr. Workman is developing a project exploring environmental and health hazards faced by communities in Eastern North Carolina.

She draws on theory and method from several disciplines including anthropology, geography, and public health. In addition to conducting scholarly research, Dr. Workman has worked in international development for donor organizations and implementing partners in Mozambique, Tanzania, and South Sudan. She specializes in monitoring and evaluation and social science research for food and water security projects.

Recent Publications:

Workman, Cassandra L. (2019) “Ebbs and flows of authority: Water resource management, decentralization and development in Lesotho.” Water. 11(184); https://doi.org/10.3390/w11020184

Workman, Cassandra L. (2019) “Perceptions of Drinking Water Cleanliness and Health Seeking Behaviours: A Qualitative Assessment of Household Water Safety in Lesotho, Africa.” Global Public Health. 1-13. DOI: 10.1080/17441692.2019.1566483.

Brewis, Alexandra, Asher Rosinger, Amber Wutich, Ellis Adams, Lee Cronk, Amber Pearson, Cassandra Workman, Sera Young, and the HWISE Consortium. (2018) “Water Sharing, reciprocity, and need: A comparative study of inter-household water transfers in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Economic Anthropology. DOI:10.1002/sea2.12143

Wutich, Amber, Jessica Budds, Wendy Jepson, Leila Harris, Ellis Adams, Alexandra Brewis, Lee Cronk, Christine DeMyers, Kenneth Maes, Tennille Marley, Joshua Miller, Amber Pearson, Asher Rosinger, Roseanne Schuster, Justin Stoller, Chad Staddon, Polly Wiessner, Cassandra Workman and Sera Young. (2018) “Household water sharing: A review of water gifts, exchanges, and transfers across cultures.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs): Water 5: e1309. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1309

Cairns, Maryann R., Cassandra L. Workman, and Indrakshi Tandon. (2017) “Gender Mainstreaming and Water Development Projects: Analyzing unexpected outcomes in Bolivia, Lesotho, and India.”  Gender, Place & Culture 24(3): 325-342. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2017.1314945

Workman, Cassandra L. and Heather Ureksoy. (2017) “Water Insecurity in a Syndemic Context: Understanding the Psycho-Emotional Stress of Water Insecurity in Lesotho, Africa.”  Social Science & Medicine 179:52-60. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.02.026

For more information and a list of her current research projects, visit her website at https://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/clworkma.

The HWISE-RCN announces a video abstract for the recent publication, “Household water sharing: A review of water gifts, exchanges, and transfers across cultures.” The RCN would like to thank Dr. Amber Wutich for leading this publication, to Dr. Sera Young for funding, and to Dr. Amber L. Pearson for facilitating this video abstract.

Dr. Chad Staddon is a Professor of Resource Economics and Policy in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Dr. Staddon is also the founder-director of the International Water Security Network and leads the research on urban water demand, under the Urban Water Security strand. Dr. Staddon serves as an executive committee member for the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) – Research Coordination Network (RCN).

In addition to his UWE, Bristol post, Chad also maintains professional affiliations with the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the School for Geography and Development at the University of Arizona. He is also an active member of the International Water Resources Association, the Royal Geographical Society and sits on the southwest regional committee for the Chartered Institute for Water and Environmental Management, and the Bristol Water Plc Local Engagement Forum. His current research interests lie in the areas of better understanding the nature and drivers of urban water demand and the potential for social and economic instruments to drive conservation efforts.

Dr. Staddon’s selected publications:

• Staddon, C., Rogers, J., Warriner, C., Ward, S. and Powell, W. (2018) Why doesn’t every family practice rainwater harvesting? Factors that affect the decision to adopt rainwater harvesting as a household water security strategy in central Uganda. Water International, 43 (8). pp. 1114-1135. ISSN 0250-8060 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/38608
• Wutich, A., Budds, J., Jepson, W., Harris, L. and Staddon, C. (2018) Household water sharing: A review of water gifts, exchanges, and transfers across cultures. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews – Water, 5 (6). e1309. ISSN 2049-1948 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/36750
• Staddon, C. and Scott, C. A. (2018) Putting water security to work: Addressing global challenges. Water International, 43 (8). pp. 1017-1025. ISSN 1941-1707 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/38889
• Staddon, C., Ward, S., De Vito, L., Zuniga-Teran, A., Gerlak, A. K., Schoeman, Y., Hart, A. and Booth, G. (2018) Contributions of green infrastructure to enhancing urban resilience. Environment Systems and Decisions, 38 (3). pp. 330-338. ISSN 2194-5403 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/37696
• Simpson, K., Staddon, C., Spotswood, F. and Ward, S. (2018) Challenges of researching showering routines – from the individual to the socio-material. In: 5th Annual Water Efficiency Network Conference, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal, 5-7 September 2018., pp. 243-252 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/38547
• Appleby, T., Studley, M., Moorhouse, B., Judith, B., Staddon, C. and Bean, E. (2018) Sea of possibilities: Old and new uses of remote sensing data for the enforcement of the Ascension Island marine protected area. Marine Policy. ISSN 0308-597X Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/36930
• Baker, K., Tang, S., Sweetapple, C., Ward, S., Staddon, C., Bishop, T., Bulmer, P. and Butler, D. (2018) Resilience learning for water sector culture change. In: 6th Joint EWA/JSWA/WEF Conference: Resilience of the Water Sector, Munich, Germany, 15-18 May 2018. Hennef: European Water Association, pp. 6-26 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/38545

For more information and a list of his current research projects, visit his website at https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/ChadStaddon and follow him @Doctor_Chad on Twitter.

Dr. Michelle Kooy is an Associate Professor of the Politics of Urban Water at IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education. She is also the Coordinator for the IHE Graduate School in Water & Development and lecturer in the MSc Programme on Water Governance. Dr. Kooy is cross-appointed to the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and is a Senior Editor of the international multi-disciplinary review journal WIRES-Water.

Dr. Kooy’s research is concerned with how inequalities in access to water and exposure to water-related risks in and across urban spaces are mediated through water infrastructure. Theorizing the politics of water infrastructure from the global south she decenters the role of centralized networks in her analysis, focusing instead on the ways in which urban water systems are connected through a range of practices and technologies, and how these simultaneously social, technical, and ecological connections shape the uneven distribution of water and related risks within urban spaces and across rural/urban boundaries.

Her current projects on urban water inequalities in cities of Arusha (Tanzania), Kampala (Uganda); Jakarta, Indonesia; and Maputo (Mozambique) analyze the politics of the urban water cycle to ask how existing interactions between wastewater, piped water, groundwater, surface water are made, and how evenly the costs and benefits are spread across society. This also entails a concern with the politics of knowledge production on urban water issues: identifying where explanatory frameworks for urban water problems come from, the power relations embedded within their assumptions, and their accuracy in explaining dynamics of urban water supply cities of the South.

Dr. Kooy’s selected publications:

Batubara, Kooy, and Zwarteveen (2018) Uneven Urbanisation: Connecting flows of water to flows of people and capital through Jakarta’s flood infrastructure. Antipode https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12401

Rusca, Alda, and Kooy (2018) Sanitation Justice? Addressing the multiple dimensions of urban sanitation inequalities, book chapter in Water Justice, eds. Boelens, Perrault, Vos. Cambridge University Press.

Furlong and Kooy (2017) Worlding Water Supply: Rethinking beyond the network in Jakarta. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41(6): 888-903.

Alda, C., Kooy, M., Rusca, M. (2017) Mapping operation and maintenance: an everyday urbanism analysis of inequalities within piped water supply in Lilongwe, Malawi. Urban Geography  (download open access version here)

Walter, Kooy, and Prabaharyaka (2017) The role of bottled drinking water in achieving SDG 6.1: An analysis of affordability and equity from Jakarta, Indonesia. International Journal of Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development

Zwarteveen, Kemerink-Seyoum, Kooy, Evers, Acevedo-Guerrero, Batubara, Faber, Flamini, Boakye-Ansah, Faber, Flamini, Cuadrado-Quesada, Fantini, Gupta, Hasan, ter Horst, Jamali, Jaspers, Obani, Schwartz, Shubber, Smit, Torio, Tutusaus (2017) The politics of water governance: distributions of water, authority, and knowledge. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews on Water

Wesselink, A., Kooy, M., Warner, J. (2016) Socio-hydrology and hydrosocial analysis: towards dialogues across disciplines. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews on Water.

Kooy, M., Walter, C., Prabaharyaka, I. (2016) Inclusive development of urban water services in Jakarta: the role of groundwater. Habitat International 

For more information and a list of her current research projects, visit her website at https://www.un-ihe.org/michelle-kooy.

Dr. Amber Pearson is an Assistant Professor in Department of Geography, Environment & Spatial Sciences and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. She is an adjunct fellow at the University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand and part of MSU’s Global Water Initiative. Dr. Pearson serves as a steering committee member in the HWISE-RCN and is this month’s HWISE Scholar Highlight.

Dr. Pearson is a health geographer with a focus on social justice and understanding the unexpected tenacity, adaptability and resilience of the underprivileged, while paying careful attention to the structural and social factors that led to disadvantage in the first place. She has diverse regional interests from poor to wealthy countries. Her features geospatial and epidemiologic methods and critical development thinking.

Her water research is at the intersection of spatial and social dimensions of health with a focus on water security. Her overall research goal is to understand the interactions between human-induced ecological change, political and social dimensions of access to water, and human agency/coping strategies to improve health and wellbeing.

Dr. Pearson’s latest publications:

Whitehead, J., Pearson, A. L., Lawrenson, R., & Atatoa‐Carr, P. (2018). Framework for examining the spatial equity and sustainability of general practitioner services. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 26(5), 336-341.

Rzotkiewicz, A., Pearson, A. L., Dougherty, B. V., Shortridge, A., & Wilson, N. (2018). Systematic review of the use of Google Street View in health research: major themes, strengths, weaknesses and possibilities for future research. Health & place, 52, 240-246.

Pearson, A. L., Rzotkiewicz, A., & Namanya, J. (2017). Perceived access to water: Associations with health in rural Uganda. American Journal of Rural Development, 5(3), 55-64.

Pearson, A. L. (2016). Comparison of methods to estimate water access: a pilot study of a GPS-based approach in low resource settings. International journal of health geographics, 15(1), 33.

Pearson, A. L., Zwickle, A., Namanya, J., Rzotkiewicz, A., Zwickle A., Mwita, E. (2016). Seasonal shifts in primary water source type: a comparison of largely pastoral communities in Uganda and Tanzania. International journal of environmental research and public health, 13(2), 169.

Pearson, A. L., Mayer, J. D., & Bradley, D. J. (2015). Coping with household water scarcity in the savannah today: implications for health and climate change into the future. Earth Interactions, 19(8), 1-14.

For more information you can visit her website at https://msu.edu/~apearson/.

Dr. Farhana Sultana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she is also the Research Director for Environmental Collaboration and Conflicts at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflicts and Collaboration (PARCC). Dr. Sultana lends her expertise as a steering committee member of the HWISE-RCN. This month we are highlighting her work as an HWISE scholar.

Dr. Sultana is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar of political ecology, water governance, post‐colonial development, social and environmental justice, climate change, and gender. Her research and scholar-activism draw from her experiences of having lived and worked on three continents as well as from her backgrounds in the natural sciences, social sciences, and policy experience. Dr. Sultana is able to ground her research through her time as a Programme Officer with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 1998 to 2001. Additionally, in 2017, Dr. Sultana was invited to speak at The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the human right to water (Picture Below).

Dr. Sultana meeting with His Holiness Pope Francis at The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences after her invited talk there in 2017.

Author of several dozen publications, her recent books are The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles (2012) and Eating, Drinking: Surviving (2017), and Water: Governance, Justice and the Right to Water (forthcoming 2019). Please also see below for Dr. Sultana’s most recent publications:

Sultana, F. 2018 “An(Other) Geographical Critique of Development and SDGs” Dialogues in Human Geography Vol. 8, No. 2, Pp. 186-190. (Open PDF)

Sultana, Farhana 2018. “The False Equivalence of Academic Freedom and Free Speech: Defending Academic Integrity in the Age of White Supremacy, Colonial Nostalgia, and Anti-intellectualism” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. Vol. 17, No. 2, Pp. 228-57. (Open PDF)

Sultana, Farhana 2018 “Water Justice: Why it Matters and How to Achieve it” Water International Vol. 43, No. 4, Pp. 483-493. (Open PDF)

Sultana, Farhana 2018, “Gender and Water in a Changing Climate: Challenges and Prospects” Water Security Across the Gender Divide, Christiane Fröhlich, Giovanna Gioli, Roger Cremades and Henri Myrttinen (Eds.) Springer: The Netherlands. Pp. 17-33. (Open PDF)

Sultana, Farhana 2017 “Reflexivity” The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, Douglas Richardson  et al. (Eds.),Wiley-Blackwell and the Association of American Geographers. Pp. 105. (Open PDF)

For more information you can visit Dr. Sultana’s website at http://www.farhanasultana.com/ and follow her on social media @farhana_h2o.