On Thursday 22 May 2025, Dr. Sarah Hamilton (University of Bergen) presented this year’s RIAS Environmental History Lecture: Towards a Global History of Groundwater.
In her lecture, part of the RIAS’s ongoing series on environmental history, historian Sarah Hamilton explored the global development of large-scale groundwater exploitation. Often hidden from view, groundwater has long been a critical—yet underexamined—resource in the struggle for water security. As Hamilton showed, the ways in which societies have accessed and managed this invisible resource offer vital insights into the environmental challenges of today.
Drawing on case studies from Australia, California, and Spain, Hamilton demonstrated how groundwater extraction had been shaped by global flows of technology, scientific knowledge, and policy innovation. These processes, she argued, frequently outpaced regulation and contributed to significant ecological consequences. Her lecture examined how these developments unfolded unevenly across different regions, but with strikingly similar patterns: unregulated expansion, ecological degradation, and political resistance.
Hamilton emphasized the vertical dimension of water history—moving beyond surface flows to examine the critical, often-overlooked, role of subterranean systems. She highlighted how the opacity of groundwater systems had complicated governance and inspired both technological ambition and resistance from entrenched users. In doing so, she called for a reframing of water history that takes seriously the connections between surface and subsurface systems—an approach with far-reaching implications for how we understand environmental change in the Anthropocene.
The lecture was delivered in the auditorium of the Zeeuws Archief to an engaged audience, and offered a compelling narrative of groundwater’s place in global history—revealing the shared struggles, innovations, and conflicts that continue to define our relationship with this hidden resource.
See the official invitation here.
