Keynote Speakers
Keynote Address: Professor Elizabeth Shove, The dynamics and hydraulics of everyday life
Elizabeth Shove is Reader in the Dept of Sociology at Lancaster University in the UK, and author of Comfort, Cleanliness + Convenience. Her address will explore the practical and theoretical implications of focusing not on water but on the services and practices it makes possible.
Plenary Speaker: Associate Professor Gay Hawkins, From the Tap to the Bottle – the biopolitics and branding of bottled water
Gay Hawkins teaches and researches in the areas of cultural theory, Australian Media and cultural policies, theories of value, governmentality, poststructuralism and waste. She is currently involved in two major research projects: The Ethics of Waste – a study of the place of waste in our ethical lives that has been published as book of the same title in 2005; and the impacts of Australia’s multicultural broadcaster, SBS. This project has been funded by the Australian Research Council and is being done in partnership with SBS and Prof Ien Ang of University of Western Sydney.
Plenary Speaker: Dr Zoë Wilson, Debates, Disconnections and Drowning: The politics of services and scarcities in post apartheid South Africa
Zoë Wilson holds a Ph.D. in political science from Dalhousie University, Canada, where she studied the relationship between global development aspirations and local implementation in Africa (case studies: Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania). She is currently completing a post-doctoral specialization in the Politics of Water at the University of KwaZulu Natal. Most recently, Zoë is conducting research into philosophical, religious and environmental attitudes towards potable reuse. Since late 2004, Zoë has also been leading the South Africa research of a DFID funded project on the politics of water scarcity in Southern Africa.
Plenary Speaker: Dr Sarah Bell, The driest continent and the greediest water company: drought in Sydney and London
Sarah Bell is a Lecturer in Environmental Engineering at UCL where she is also co-director of the UCL Environment Institute focussing on interdisciplinary water research. Her research interests centre on the relationships between technology and society as they relate to urban water systems. Her specific research interests include drought, water reuse, infrastructure provision in developing countries and the role of engineers in the water systems.