The History of Water Management

About this conference

The Interuniversity Centre of History of Science and Technology and the Water Museum of Lisbon are organising a Workshop dedicated to the Study of Water Management in Portugal during the early modern period.

Internationally renowned experts are invited to share their knowledge and promote comparative studies on technology, scientific knowledge, cultural uses, and issues in water management between case-studies in the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean and Central European countries, as well as Morocco and other parts of the world.

Call for papers (excerpt)

Although some individual topics have been investigated, Water History in Portugal is still to be made. This conference aims to contribute to that historiographical gap by focusing on water history in the early modern period. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, water works were particularly challenging in Portugal,  covering the construction of aqueducts, the spread of watermills, the use of wells and norias, and the development of irrigation systems and water works in gardens, among others. This was accompanied by a prolific international literary production which circulated and existed in Portuguese libraries, and this knowledge also taught in the Portuguese context.

This conference aims to build historical knowledge on water based on the contributions of various fields such as the History of Science, Hydraulic Engineering, Landscape Architecture, Geography and Urbanism. Furthermore, it aims to gather experts across Europe and from northern Africa so as to promote a comparative study between water technology or water management in Portugal and other geographies.

Finally, we want to discuss how this knowledge and these solutions can be useful in current times.

We strongly encourage comparative and transdisciplinary approaches. Potential contributors are invited to submit a paper on the following topics:

• Organising expertise in treatises on hydraulics, agriculture, art of gardens and urbanism
• Books, projects, experts and the circulation of water technology
• Water systems used both in productive fields and designed landscapes and evaluation of their efficiency
• Interrelationship between people and a technology cluster
• Hydraulic systems and the actors enrolled in these constructions, their management and use
• Flood control and drainage
• Impact of water technology in society and the environment

Invited Speakers

Matteo Valleriani is a Historian of Science and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He has focused his research on the relations between practical knowledge and technology on the one side, and theoretical knowledge on the other side. Stemming from this framework he has studied the hydraulics system of Pratolino Gardens, Italy.

Aurora Carapinha is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Évora and has collaborated for a few years with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Mediterranean landscape and the essence of Portuguese Garden have framed her research topics.

Desidério Batista is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Algarve and has been doing research in Morocco and Brazil for the past two years to deepen a comparative analysis between vegetable gardens in the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Africa.

Urszula Sowina is an Associate Professor at the Centre of History of Material Culture at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She is the author of publications on the history of medieval and early-modern towns: sociotopography, layout, society, economics, history of material culture, water supply, legal systems, testaments and inventories of movable goods of the burghers of Cracow in the 15th-16th centuries. She is the author of Water, Towns and People (Peter Lang, 2016).

Scientific Programme

Conference Chair

Ana Duarte Rodrigues
Assistant Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Conference Secretaries

Muhammad Sohail
PhD student, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, Portugal

João Puga
PhD student, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, Portugal

João Machado
Research fellow, Interuniversitary Centre for the History of Sciences and Technology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal

• Conference website (deactivated)