The research addresses the environment between philosophical conceptualisation and environmental aesthetics. Its background problematises concepts such as 'world' and 'environment' and the opposition between 'natural' and 'cultural'. The starting point is the recognition that the dichotomies between culture and nature, natural sciences and humanities, as well as their respective epistemological ideals have crumbled under the environmental crisis and the Anthropocene. This PhD project of 2024 investigates the cultural experience of water through labour. It addresses the epistemology of traditional fishing activities, including practical and tacit knowledge. Located at the crossdisciplinary confluence of historical epistemology, environmental humanities, and the environmental sciences, this PhD reassesses forms of knowledge and practices that have permitted lasting societal interactions with the environment. These are currently under threat owing to multiple crises, especially climate change. By mapping significant cases, this PhD aims to establish a broad cognitive basis for the comprehension of water ecologies and their natural-cultural history. Such comprehension can reorient the management of resources towards a more sustainable paradigms, in line with the SDGs and the UNESCO water programs (IHP and WWAP). The research of this PhD is inserted in the framework of the UNESCO Chair on Water Heritage and Sustainable Development in Venice.

Background formation in areas related to the environmental humanities. Fluent knowledge of English.

The research will be embedded in a lively research and teaching environment, especially in connection with ongoing research agendas in political epistemology, environmental philosophy, and historical hydrosociology, of which the UNESCO chair Water Heritage and Sustainable Development is exemplar.