CeCASt Seminar 25/06/2025

Topic: Kɔ Nsuo: Walking and Embodying the Waterscape

Date: Thursday 25th June, 2026

Time: 10:00 AM

Venue: CeCASt Seminar Room - Commercial Area

Presenter: Simona Bianchi 
PhD Fellow - Center for African Studies 
University of Copenhagen 

Abstract:
In this presentation, Simona will discuss kɔ nsuo (the process of fetching water and carrying it home) as a heuristic epistemological and methodological tool to understand how waterscapes (in their material, cultural, social, economic and political components) are experienced by gendered bodies. This perspective allows us to underscore how human and more-than-human bodies intersect with space(s) in a mutually constitutive process. As the task of fetching water is a predominantly women’s responsibility while it is mostly men who sit in water committees, a study that theoretically and methodologically centers kɔ nsuo unveils the creation, negotiation, contestation of gendered water-trajectories (Low, 2018), providing a physical and symbolical reconstruction of the urban space that is grounded in women’s everyday lived experiences.