Rossella Alba is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geography Department and at IRI THEsys. She researches governance and infrastructural relations focusing on energy and water – including rivers, urban water supply systems, dams and, more recently, coastal and marine spaces. In her work she brings together theories and concepts in resource geography, infrastructural studies and feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS). She is interested in reflexivity in methodological approaches and in experimenting in novel research methodologies for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration with the aim of fostering just transformations.
At IRI THESys, she works as the scientific coordinator of the “Water security for whom?” project (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation) where she researches water-food-energy relations in the context of large scale hydropower dams. Prior to joining IRI THESys, Rossella was a research assistant in the Waterpower project (funded by the BMBF) at the Governance and Sustainability Lab at Trier University, where she carried out her PhD research on urban water inequalities in Accra, Ghana. She was also a research assistant at the Geography Department at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a master student at Wageningen University. She has research experience in Ghana, Mozambique, Ethiopia and in Italy.
Water security for whom? – Social and material perspectives on inequality around multipurpose reservoirs in Colombia
Controversial tools: researching modelling practices in water governance, Constructive Advance Training programme 2022-2025, Network European Institutes for Advanced Studies.
Alba, R., & Kanesu, R. (2024) Working with water: a dialogue on care, infrastructure and labour. Territory, Politics, Governance, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2024.2313584
Frick-Trzebitzky, F., Alba, R., & Fehrs, K. (2023). Adaptive governance as bricolage. Geographica Helvetica, 78(3), 397-409.
Flores Fernández, C. and Alba, R. (2023) Water or mineral resource? Legal interpretations and hydrosocial configurations of lithium mining in Chile. Frontiers in Water, https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2023.1075139
Alba, R., Klepp S. and Bruns A. (2020) Environmental justice and the politics of climate change adaptation – the case of Venice, Geographica Helvetica 75(4), 363-368
Krueger, T. and Alba, R., (2022) Ontological and epistemological commitments in interdisciplinary water research: Uncertainty as an entry point for reflexion. Frontiers in Water, https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.1038322