Rivers on the move

June 1-2, 2023

On June 1-2, 2023, the Emergences project SHIFTING SHORES will hold its final workshop at Brown University, United States. Born from a collaboration of Giacomo Parrinello (Sciences Po, CHSP) with Bathsheba Demuth and Larry Smith from Brown University and Mark Healey from the University of Connecticut, the workshop will gather scholars from history, anthropology, landscape architecture, geography, hydrology, fluvial geomorphology and sedimentology to discuss the multifaceted relationship between the natural dynamism of rivers and deltas and social, economic, and political change with case studies covering rivers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Twenty-first century riverine and coastal vulnerabilities often emerge from past efforts to make amphibious zones fully terrestrial—to settle, confine, and control hydrological processes.The workshop will investigate why and how people have attempted to fix or settle amphibious and shifting riverine landscapes, the consequences for rivers’ forms and behavior, and how such past human-river interactions influence contemporary life. The participants will work together on an edited collection that will present the variety of approaches and case studies to understand the history of “rivers on the move” in well-researched but accessible essays.

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