On Tuesday, May 6, our Fellow Davide Martino, a postdoctoral researcher in History at the sociAMM and MMC (Modern and Contemporary Worlds) research centers at the ULB, will give a seminar titled “Qui a vidé la terre d’eau ? Une histoire environnementale du Suriname colonial à l’époque moderne”.
Davide Martino (PhD in History, University of Cambridge) was awarded a Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral grant to carry out a research project at the ULB titled “Land of Water: Constructing the hydraulic environment in colonial Suriname, c. 1650–1850”, under the supervision of Prof. Chloé Deligne.
As he writes, his research “draws on the insights of environmental history to understand how local environments in the Dutch colony of Suriname were constructed by human and more-than-human agents. Following the lead of historians of technology and architecture, it focuses on the built environment—particularly the colony’s hydraulic infrastructure—as a palimpsest of past practices, technologies, and values. Combining the lenses of these two historical disciplines, ‘Land of Water’ sheds new light on an understudied part of the Dutch colonial empire, and contributes to current debates about the legacies of colonialism, enslavement, and the extraction of natural resources”.
The seminar will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 PM in room NA4.302 (Solbosch campus). More information is available on the sociAMM website, where you can also visit Dr Martino’s personal page.