The Francophone Doctoral Conference on Water Social Sciences 2024: Building Knowledge for Action – Introduction

Abstract

The Francophone Doctoral Conference on Water Social Sciences (DSSE), created in 2014 at ENGEES, aims to bring together a dispersed community of doctoral students working on water-related topics. After ten years and seven editions, more than 200 doctoral students have been able to present their work to established researchers in a setting described as stimulating, supportive, and multidisciplinary. The 7th edition, held in Bordeaux in December 2024, brought together around 100 participants, including 51 young researchers from various disciplines (geography, sociology, anthropology, economics, etc.). The theses presented cover issues such as climate change, environmental justice, water management, and public policy, reflecting the diversity of methodological and theoretical approaches. This special issue, based on ten selected papers, illustrates the production of “action knowledge”: knowledge that is both scientific and operational, mobilized to inform and legitimize action on socio-water issues. The articles explore concrete cases (access to water, governance, risk adaptation, etc.), highlighting the processes of social construction of this knowledge and its role in water management.