THE FUTURE OF PAST REEFS
Politics of Care in Oyster Restoration Across the Northern Atlantic
Personal NWO Veni Grant 2024-2028
There is increasing interest in bringing back oyster reefs that once covered North-Atlantic coasts. Reef restoration involves practices of caring and repairing, and assumes human intervention. But what is a good reef to restore for the future? And what knowledge should guide how we care for it? Through comparative ethnographic fieldwork in the US, UK and the Netherlands this research investigates the processes of in-/exclusion of different values and knowledge practices in oyster restoration initiatives. Understanding how different actors in oyster restoration and their perspectives relate to each-other, and the power differences involved, is vital to successful and equitable restoration programs, and provides a basis for inclusive marine restoration policy. More info: see the academic abstract, or this info sheet for project partners.
ECOAMARE: ECosystem-based Adaptive MAnagement for REnewable energy in a sustainable North Sea (NWO, consortium)
Leading: WP-1 Science-policy-society (2023-2027)
This research project focuses on the politics of knowlede practices in the development of nature-inclusive offshore wind farms in the North Sea.
PhD researcher: Veerle Boekestijn
Co-supervision with Dr. L. Vandenbussche (VU) and Prof SR Bush (WUR)
BeWild – Biodiversity Enhanced Windfarm Development, Integrated Monitoring, Inspection and Localized Design
WP-6 Governance
(2023-2027)
This project within a wider consortium explores the social-political implications of using emerging biodiversity monitoring technologies for marine governance. The study focuses on eDNA technologies developed and used for monitoring biodiversity in offshore windfams in the North Sea.
PhD Researcher: Samantha Kristensen
Co-supervision with Prof SR Bush (WUR)
Funded by RVO Netherlands
GENDER AND EPISTEMIC DIVERSITY IN MARINE RESTORATION
(2021-2022)
This pilot explored oyster restoration in Western Europe and the East coast of the US. Oyster restoration in these regions show a variety of approaches, and different kinds of collaborations between scientists, non-profit organizations, oyster farmers, volunteers etc. Through interviews and site visits, this project shed light on different values, knowledge practices and nature perspectives that underlie oyster restoration initiatives, and how they – in their interaction – shape how oyster restoration is done in different places.
Junior researchers: Wisse van Engelen, Veerle Boekestijn (WUR).
Funded by Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus
GENDER AND FEMINIST THEORY IN AND FOR MARINE SCIENCE
(2020-2023)
How can feminist and queer theory help tackle structural gendered inequities to advance ocean equity? This project reviewed how current approaches in marine science compare to gender and feminist theoretical debates more broadly. The findings emphasize how an intersectional analysis is crucial for marine science ocntributions to equitable ocean governance. Read the report here
Junior researcher: Sallie Lau, University of Washington
Funded by Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus
REALITIES UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Exploring complexity in the building of Marine Protected Areas in Indonesia
(2011-2016)
This PhD project explored the fundamentally different ways people understand, value and relate to the sea in a maritime region in Indonesia, and how this affects marine conservation conflicts. The study is based on twenty months of mobile ethnographic research, following practices and narratives of sea-nomads, conservationists, fish traders, security agents, and others. The resulting PhD thesis ‘Amphibious Anthropology’ focuses on the conceptual and methodological challenges that flow from the objective to grasp ontological and epistemic difference and fluidity in human-environment relations, without reducing these to one definition of reality.
PhD Thesis: Amphibious Anthropology: Engaging with Maritime Worlds in Indonesia
Funded by Wageningen School of Social Sciences PhD grant
HORIZON 2020 EURASTiP:
WP 3: Social-political conditions of West-East collaboration in sustainability standards in aquaculture
2019-2020 (postdoc)
This postdoc project investigated:
1) the social-political conditions for the development of aquaculture collaboration platforms between the EU and Southeast Asian partners.
2) the social-political conditions for the equitable inclusion of small-scale shrimpfarmers in aquaculture improvement protocols in Vietnam.
Funded by EU
Further reading:
THE FUTURE OF PAST REEFS: POLITICS OF CARE IN OYSTER RESTORATION ACROSS THE NORTH ATLANTIC
NWO Veni project 2024-2028
Scientific summary:
Restoration initiatives are surging globally to repair degraded reefs through human intervention. Although it is widely agreed that this is a good thing to do, it raises the political question: what is a ‘good reef’ to restore? And for whom? Social scientists warn for deep-seated inequalities in whose voice is listened to and what knowledge counts. However, this research has almost entirely focused on tropical reefs. Paradoxically, while this has illuminated mechanisms of excluding voices from the South, the North-South dialectic has also largely ignored the plural perspectives in the North. This project addresses this gap by opening a new field of research on plural ways of knowing and caring for oyster reefs across the North Atlantic.
Through the lens of ‘care’, this project re-conceptualizes the politics involved in reef restoration. Despite its moral association of ‘doing good’, care is political. It is underpinned by different assumptions of what is a good and healthy reef, and what knowledge should guide intervention. How do these politics of care shape the conditions for including plural knowledge in marine restoration in the North Atlantic? Addressing this question, this project sheds light on how restoration enacts specific inclusions and exclusions in knowing and repairing degraded marine environments for the future.
The qualitative anthropological research involves a multi-sited research design, with three exemplary case studies in the United States, Netherlands and United Kingdom. Here, oyster reefs are uniquely entangled with transatlantic cultural history and industrialization. My project combines ethnographic research with experimental video elicitation for data collection, analysis and outreach. Through a focus on oysters, this will contribute novel insights to the current re-imagining and re-shaping of human-nature connections in degraded marine environments. The findings will support shaping more equitable conditions for reef restoration science, policy and practice and advance debate on epistemological justice in marine restoration globally.
