The Eindhoven History Lab has acquired seed funding for a project dedicated to re-inventing wastewater for rural-urban circularity in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. The funding has been granted by EWUU, an alliance of four Dutch Universities. The seed funding will be used to support a cross disciplinary and collaborative initiative by TU Eindhoven, Wageningen University & Research, and Utrecht University, which addresses urban-rural circularity, one of the themes of the EWUU programme on Circular Society.
The project
Re-inventing wastewater for rural-urban circularity: co-creating pathways for the water, energy and food nexus in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area
This project pilots an innovative inter- and transdisciplinary research method to interrogate and co-create actionable transformation pathways that reintroduce wastewater recycling as a nexus between water, energy and food (WEF) systems and between cities and their suburban and rural hinterland in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. By highlighting multiple synergies with WEF supply (e.g., clean water, nutrients for agriculture, renewable energy resources to heat, electricity or mobility systems), the reintroduction of wastewater recycling is seen as critical pathway to circular economies and to enhance urban-rural cohesion. In the first phase, we will study existing and emergent sociotechnical configurations of fragmented water, energy, and food systems based on 1) narratives of wastewater reuse, 2) implications on user and provider practices, and 3) regional governance capacities across WEF systems. In the second phase, the research will co-create transformation pathways together with stakeholders to stimulate changing perspectives and codevelop shared imaginaries for wastewater circularity, and to explore how these imaginaries can be embedded in changing practices and governance institutions to enhance regional resource provision and urban-rural cohesion.
The role of TU Eindhoven
In order to ‘re-invent’ wastewater and co-create actionable transformation pathways towards rural-urban circularity, a diversity of stakeholder groups such as users, farmers, engineers, or policymakers needs to reach a fundamental agreement on possible ways forward. We can only facilitate this process if we understand how different actors frame the problem and how they embed it in wider narratives of change. These narratives span the past, present and future and they might associate wastewater treatment with a variety of expected and unexpected aspects: regional or professional identities, urban-rural relations, ideas about hygiene, or right to infrastructure just to name a few.
Within the project, researchers from TUE will explore and map these narratives. For that purpose we will conduct interviews with different stakeholders and analyze them, using approaches such as narrative analysis or (critical) historical discourse analysis. We will investigate such narratives’ historical context, characters and events, emplotments, and temporal dynamics. We will also compare them to underlying narratives of other sources, from academic articles to promotional videos. In doing so, we will collaborate closely with other researchers at the Eindhoven History Lab dedicated to exploring how historical knowledge can be made ‘actionable’ and inform the development of more inclusive sustainable future imaginaries.
The narratives that we will identify directly feed into the preparation of stakeholder workshops at the end of the research project. They will also help us to conduct historical research in a more ‘grounded’ way, for example by interpreting sources not only through the lens of their and narratives and preconceptions but also those that we identify.
Getting involved
Please note that we are looking for a research assistant to support our research and write her/his Master thesis!
For further information please contact Jonas van der Straeten, j.n.van.der.straeten@tue.nl