Just Waters: Thinking with Hydro-Social Relations for a More Just and Sustainable World, is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the University of Manitoba’s Ignite Program and supported by the Centre for Human Rights Research. It is housed at St. John’s College. The three-year project brings together researchers from seven faculties and ten departments at the UM including the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. It also includes a growing number of partnerships with research centres and organizations working towards water justice broadly speaking. The project is led by Dr. Adele Perry, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts (History and Women’s and Gender Studies). Perry has been the Director of the CHRR since 2020, and has more than two decades of experience leading research teams. She is deeply committed to collaborative, socially relevant, and engaged research related to water justice.

Just Waters applies an interdisciplinary lens to water (in)justice and will work to move research to the next steps, whether it’s advocacy, knowledge mobilization, or policy recommendations. Beginning with the insights of Annishinaabeg knowledge, the framing of One Health and centering the hydro-social, Just Waters will operate both locally and at the global level, and their intersectionalities.

Just Waters is organized around three interrelated and overlapping clusters, each of which draws on wide interdisciplinary and interfaculty expertise, that sheds light on the relationship between water and justice.

The Just Waters team will produce relevant, original, and timely responses to the ongoing questions surrounding water justice including as examples:

• Podcast
• Critical Conversations Speaker Series
• Community Research Fund
• Curriculum development
• Open access materials

For more information on Just Waters, please contact chrrman@umanitoba.ca.