Down by the Water is an interdisciplinary online lecture series and research platform that explores how waterways shape human societies from prehistory to the present. Rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans have long acted as spaces of interaction, exchange, and knowledge transmission, shaping social organisation, mobility, and cultural connections across regions and periods. The project places particular emphasis on human–environment relationships in maritime, fluvial, and lacustrine contexts.

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Building on earlier interdisciplinary initiatives on water transit points and watery landscapes, the lecture series provides a platform for current research in maritime history, archaeology, anthropology, ethnography, and related fields. It brings together scholars working across diverse geographic and temporal contexts to examine how watery environments influence human action, connectivity, and resilience.

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Down by the Water forms part of the broader intellectual ecosystem of the Women and Oceans Think Tank, which seeks to connect scholarship on maritime societies with contemporary discussions on ocean governance, heritage, and coastal futures. Insights emerging from the lecture series contribute to the Think Tank’s broader mission of translating academic research into knowledge that can inform public debate and policy conversations about maritime cultures and coastal communities.

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The project is hosted online, using digital space as a metaphor for the watery networks that historically connected people, knowledge, and exchange across distance. The online lecture series offers an open forum to present and discuss ongoing research on maritime-related topics worldwide, encouraging dialogue across disciplines and perspectives. Recordings of these lectures are preserved as part of a growing digital repository on maritime cultures, creating a shared resource for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in the diverse ways societies have engaged with water across time and space.

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In addition to the lecture series, the initiative also supports targeted exchanges between researchers and practitioners. Through dedicated dialogue formats—such as the Think Tank’s “Fish Tank” sessions—policy makers and practitioners can bring forward questions arising from real-world governance challenges and discuss them with specialists in maritime archaeology, anthropology, history, and related fields. These conversations aim to strengthen the impact of research by fostering direct dialogue between academic knowledge and policy practice.

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