Position:
Early-stage researcher
Address:
Department of Human Geography
Universitet Stockholms
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
Biography:
Hey! My name is Chris de Bont and I am one of the early stage researchers within the REAL Project. As of February 2014, I am based at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. I have a BSc and an MSc in Irrigation and Water Management from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. My studies so far have had an interdisciplinary focus, viewing irrigation systems as socio-technical networks. I have applied this approach during my thesis work in Nepal (BSc), Tanzania and Egypt (MSc).
The work most closely related to my current PhD project, is my research in the Pangani basin in Tanzania, where I studied the competition over water between “modern” horticultural agribusinesses and “local” irrigation communities. I will continue to address related issues in my PhD work, in wich I will look at the trends and dynamics of irrigation development in the Pangani basin in the recent past and present. I hope to contribute to discussions about finding “the right irrigation” and to engage with policy questions of how best to support and boost irrigation in the Pangani basin. At the same time, I aim at de-constructing some of the container concepts that have been used by both scholar and policy-makers, in which “traditional” and “modern” systems are presented as inherently different, with one often being preferred over the other.
I am generally interested in studying human-environment interactions through an interdisciplinary lens, especially within the domain of natural resource management.
Email:
chris.de.bont@humangeo.su.se
Website:
Departmental website