Professor Veronica Strang FAcSS
Environmental Anthropologist
ABOUT
Veronica Strang is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on human relations with water.
Working as a freelance writer took me from the UK, to the Caribbean and then to Canada and Australia. Writing for the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario led to involvement in the production of the 1987 Brundtland Report Our Common Future. This raised a question for me about why some societies live more sustainably with the non-human world than others. A Master’s course in Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University provided such an illuminating way of thinking that I embarked upon a PhD.
For the last 30 years my research and consultancy work has been concerned with human-environmental relationships, in particular societies’ engagements with water. My major ethnographic research has been in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. I now live in the UK, in Oxford, where I am affiliated to the University’s School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.
I have worked with the water industry and many water using groups including indigenous people, farmers, miners, recreational water users, conservation organisations, museums and artists.
I regularly do consultancy work on indigenous land and water rights, most recently addressing sea country issues in the Tiwi Islands in northern Australia. My research also involves collaboration with international bodies such as UNESCO and the United Nations.
Interdisciplinarity
My research engages with a range of disciplinary areas and from 2012-2022 I was the Executive Director of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. From 2017-2022 I served on the UK’s national panel facilitating the evaluation of interdisciplinary research. I now assist a number of Universities with their interdisciplinary activities.
Current projects
Building on a major study exploring different cultural and historical beliefs in water beings, and how these reflect changes in human-environmental relationships, I am working with a production company to develop a proposal for a related TV series, which will include animating some of the culturally diverse stories about water beings. See video below.
Ongoing advisory and collaborative endeavours include a project with colleagues in Italy on the Venice lagoon; an Oslo-Venice- Cologne collaboration on deltas; work on relations of water and power with colleagues in Cambridge; an advisory role on a project on eels in the Po Delta, and a collaborative role in artist Siobhan McDonald’s Dublin Port project.
NEW PROJECT
I recently joined the ‘Water’ project team of Sanctuary on the Moon. Led by engineer Beniot Faiveley, this initiative – developed in partnership with NASA and UNESCO – aims to send 24 laser-engraved sapphire discs to the Moon on NASA’s Artemis mission. These discs will preserve a curated collection of Humanity’s cultural and scientific heritage. Scheduled for launch in 2028 the disks are designed to remain preserved on the lunar surface for a million years. https://sanctuaryonthemoon.com/fr/
recent BOOKS
Strang, V. and Krause, F. (eds) 2026. Water, Scale and Materiality: anthropological perspectives on hydrosocial relations, Oxford, New York: Berghahn.
Strang, V. 2023. Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis, London: Reaktion Books. Water Beings | Reaktion Books
INTERVIEWS AND PODCASTS
2026. Interview with Josh Schrei, The Emerald podcast, Hawai’i.
2025. Interview with Moritz Jelting, Bayern 2 – Water. Bavarian Public Broadcasting.
2024. Interview with Luke Clancy, Lyric FM. The Culture File Weekly: Water Beings, January 19th, 2024. https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22344921-the-culture-file-weekly-200124-water-being-and-we/
2024. Interview with Jana Byars, New Books Network podcast. https://newbooksnetwork.com/water-beings
2023. Interview with Laurie Taylor on Thinking Allowed. September 2023.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001qdyq
Contact
EMAIL: veronica@veronicastrang.com
TELEPHONE: +44 (0)7751 756261
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Strang, V. 2026. ‘From Rivulet to Flood: African water beings on minor and major scales’, in Traversing Scales in Material Relations with Water, eds. V. Strang and F. Krause, Oxford, New York: Berghahn.
Strang, V. 2025. ‘Rights of Passage: the case for rivers as living beings’, review of Robert Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive? Times Literary Supplement, April 11th 2025. p.13.
Strang, V. and Luetz, J.M. 2025. ‘Eco-pilgrimages: linking humans, heritage, and hydrology’, Ambio, 54 pp. 918-922.
Strang, V. 2025. ‘Summoning the Water Serpent’, Hellebore. Issue 13. pp.78-87,
Strang, V. 2025. ‘May Day! The Giant, the Well, and the Dorset Otter-Dragon’, Garland Magazine. ttps://garlandmag.com/issue-38/
WORK IN PROGRESS
Strang, V. awaiting commentaries. ‘The Materialities of Wonder: exploring human responses to water and light’ in Current Anthropology.
Strang, V. forthcoming. ‘Human Despotism: water and power in relation to the non-human domain’, in Hydrologics: rethinking Karl Wittfogel’s ‘Oriental Despotism’, eds. J. Bristley, S. Namsaraeva, D. Sneath. Cambridge.
Strang, V. in press. ‘Riverine Powers: the creative agency of water beings in Mayan art and ritual’, in Riverine: A multispecies approach to decolonizing landscapes, (eds) Swati Chattopadhyay and Zeynep Kezer, Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.
Strang, V. in press. ‘Littoral Beings: totemic sea country in Aboriginal Australia’, in Handbook of Littoral Studies, eds. Ursula Kluwick and Virginia Richter, Berlin: De Gruyter.
Strang, V. in press. ‘Supernatural Powers: the emergent social and material agency of water beings’, in Hydropoetics: an ecocritical perspective on Eastern European Arts, Eds Jana Rogoff and Susanne Frank. Transcript Publishing.
RECENT / UPCOMING LECTURES
2026. Water Beings. The Gathering: for water and nature, Stratford-On-Avon, Rivers of Hope. March 15th, 2026.
2025. Human Despotism: water and power in relation to the non-human domain’ in workshop: Hydrologics: rethinking Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism, Cambridge University, October 1st 2025.
2025. Convivial Relations: living harmoniously with deltaic environments, paper in Deltas of Change international workshop, Oslo University, University of Cologne, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, June 16th-18th, 2025.