Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi (Princeton) is a PhD student in Princeton's Near Eastern Studies department. He studies transoceanic movements and interactions across the maritime Omani empire. In his work, AlMaazmi examines the intersection of colonial securitization, native thalassocracy, littoral transcultural networks and processes of diaspora-making between the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world.
Meredith Denning (Georgetown) is a PhD candidate in the environmental history of transboundary water management at Georgetown. In her dissertation, "Environmental Change, Institutional Learning, and Transnational Water Management on the Lower Great Lakes, 1900-1972," she studies how Canada and the United States tried to manage the Great Lakes together during the twentieth century.
Xiangli Ding (SUNY Buffalo) is a PhD candidate in history. His dissertation, titled "Transforming Waters: A History of Hydroelectricity in Twentieth-Century China," examines small hydropower projects in southwest China and a mega-project on the Yellow River. Ding holds an MA in history from Nanjing University.
John Doyle-Raso (Michigan State) is a third-year PhD student in history. His dissertation research at MSU examines the late twentieth-century policy shift from swamp reclamation to wetland conservation in the context of the water politics of the Nile, and explores how this history relates to changing landscapes and vocabularies in eastern Uganda. Doyle-Raso has an MA/MS in International and World History from Columbia University/LSE.
Jeffrey Egan (University of Connecticut) is a PhD candidate in history. His dissertation, "Watershed Decisions: The Environmental History of the Quabbin Reservoir, 1870-1945," examines the expansion of Boston's waterworks into the Swift River Valley in western Massachusetts—an event that caused the elimination of four rural towns, the displacement of several thousand people, and transformation of 187 square miles of land. Egan holds an MA in history from the University of Connecticut.
Rina Faletti (University of California, Merced) is Project Researcher and Exhibition Curator in UC Merced's Global Art Studies Program. She examines the ways in which water, landscape and built environments have historically contributed to cultural-aesthetic values that drive urban modernization. The current focus of her work is on hydraulic aesthetics in California and the American West. Faletti has a PhD in art history (2015) from the University of Texas at Austin.
Daniel Grant (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a PhD candidate in geography. His dissertation, "Water Ways: Hydraulic Life in the California Borderlands, 1848-2017," examines how cultural relationships formed with Colorado River water along lines of race, class, labor, and nation, and how they manifested in daily life and political struggles from the mid-19th century to the present. Grant holds an MS in geography from UW-Madison.
Aditya Ramesh (SOAS) is a PhD candidate in history at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His dissertation, "Water Technocracy: Dams, Public Works and Development in Colonial India," studies the rise of the first multi-purpose river valley project in colonial India, on the Cauvery River in South India. Ramesh has an MA in history from SOAS.
Michaela Rife (University of Toronto) is a PhD candidate in art history. Her dissertation examines visual engagements with resource extraction in the American West between 1880 and 1950. Rife is a currently 2017-18 predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She holds an MA in art history (critical and curatorial studies) from the University of British Columbia, and an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in the University of London.
Hillar Schwertner (Georgetown) is a PhD candidate in history. His dissertation project, titled "Tijuandiego since 1848: A Hydraulic History of the California Borderlands," explores the transnational water history of the California borderlands since 1848. He spent the 2015-16 academic year doing archival research in Tijuana, Mexicali and Mexico City. Schwertner has an MA in history from Georgetown.
Nikiwe Solomon (University of Cape Town) is a PhD candidate in environmental humanities. Her research, "The River Multiple: An ethnography of the Kuils River in Cape Town," explores the ontologies of water resource management in the context of inherited colonial and apartheid-era spatial urban planning. Solomon holds an MSS in social anthropology from the University of Cape Town.