Making Strange – Page 2 – A Fresh Look at the Familiar: Policy, Water and More

April 9, 2022 / General Interest

Call for Project Proposals: Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship at ISS, The Hague

Call for Project Proposals

Merchandising Water Expertise in the Times of Climate Crisis: “Disaster Capitalism” or Markets for Resilience?

This is a call for project proposals to jointly apply for a Marie Curie Fellowship with Erasmus University Rotterdam as a host (working with dr. Farhad Mukhtarov at International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague). The candidate will have the freedom to shape the project towards his/her own interests, together with dr. Mukhtarov and other researchers at ISS. Below are some ideas that may offer guidance in your application. New ideas along the lines of water governance and the politics of knowledge/expertise are most welcome as well. A secondment at a Dutch non-academic partner is possible: options include a management consulting company, a water company or a regional water authority. Below are some ideas on a possible project within research interests and expertise of Dr. Mukhtarov.

(more…)

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

April 9, 2022 / General Interest

Water (In)Security Panel at European Forum Alpbach

The session on “Water (In)Security” at European Forum Alpbach in 2020 was organised in the form of a panel discussion between four panelists: Leena Koni Hoffmann, Tom Middendorp, Chitra Nagarajan, Stefan Rahmstorf. This was promising to be an interesting discussion, unfortunately the conversation was rather dull and had almost no insights to offer for anyone involved in water governance beyond an amateur level. Mediation of Leena Koni Hoffmann was aspirational, but too zealous and resulted in rather mundane questions posed to the panelists whose expertise did not cover the issues asked. (more…)

April 9, 2022 / Education

The Rise of Global Hydro-hubs in the Times of Climate Crisis

On 29 August, dr. Farhad Mukhtarov delivered a lecture followed by a discussion at the European Forum Alpbach. His lecture, known in the context of the forum as a “working group”, was titled “The Rise of Global Hydro-hubs in the Times of Climate Crisis” and lasted for 1 hour 15 minutes; between 60 and 90 participants attended the lecture with the number growing by the time of the discussion. It was hosted by the Azerbaijani Chapter of the Forum and moderated by Ms. Abutab Abbasova. (more…)

July 25, 2020 / General Interest

Behavioural Public Policy or Nudging: Good or Bad?

I have been reading and thinking about nudging for over four years now and the debate around it never stops to amaze me. Many of the readers of this blog will be familiar with the well-known book by Thaler and Sunstein released in 2009 and winning Richard Thaler a Nobel prize in economics later (of course the prize was given to his oeuvre not limited to just one book). The wave of behaviouralism, a branch of social sciences mostly rooted in economics and psychology that focuses on human behaviour as not just conditioned by rational thinking, has become only greater in the last years with prominent economists, psychologists and political scientists embracing it. (more…)