IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in The Netherlands (IHE)

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Dr. Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum Dr. Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum is a water engineer and a social scientist who holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Water Governance in the department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in The Netherlands. 
Kemerink’s research mainly focuses on the critical analysis of interventions within the agricultural water domain. In particular, Kemerink studies the everyday practices of water use and the negotiations over water allocations between farmers and how these are affected by interventions such as water reform processes and infrastructural developments. In her work she pays explicit attention to processes of social differentiation based on gender and race and the implications thereof.

In her research Kemerink adopts an interdisciplinary approach in which she considers water distributions as the outcome of interactions between nature, technologies and society. Currently she is particularly interested in understanding what water infrastructure is and does within these interactions and she aims to shed light on this by carefully documenting the everyday practices of engineers, operators and water users who engage with these pieces of infrastructure.

Dr. Margreet Zwarteveen Professor Margreet Zwarteveen is an irrigation engineer and social scientist and was appointed in 2014 as professor of Water Governance at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in The Netherlands.
Zwarteveen studies water allocation policies and practices, focusing on questions of equity and justice. Her research includes the study of different institutional and technical modalities for allocating water and regulating water flows, and of different ways to understand or legitimize these. Zwarteveen uses an interdisciplinary approach, seeing water allocation as the outcome of interactions between nature, technologies and society.

The relation between power and water is central in the work of Zwarteveen, with explicit attention to gender. Her current research looks at re-allocations of water from agriculture and rural areas to cities and industries: how do these re-allocations happen, with what effects, and how are they legitimized in policies and knowledge? She for instance studies how the introduction of supposedly water efficient technologies (drip irrigation) goes accompanied with, and causes, changes in water tenure relations that favour some people more than others. Zwarteveen is also interested in questions emerging at the interface between science and policy when governing water, especially in relation to the challenges of dealing with complexities and uncertainties.