Conference: Planetary Waters – A Challenge Between Abstraction and Empathy

Conference / Wednesday to Friday,from 22 to 24 October 2025 / German Maritime Museum

The DSM is organizing the conference together with the Ca' Foscari University in Venice and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

This interdisciplinary event will bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to explore public communication strategies that integrate the planetary scale of water studies while maintaining a focus on human-water relationships at the local level. The intertwined crises of climate change and biodiversity loss urge us to incorporate a planetary perspective into our thinking and actions more than ever before. The conference “Planetary Waters” addresses this challenge by examining water in its many forms—oceans, seas, inland waters, and wetlands—through interdisciplinary dialogues that balance abstraction with empathy.

Key questions include: How can the complex effects of climate change on the hydrosphere be made accessible to diverse audiences? Can the humanities and museum exhibitions integrate a planetary perspective while conveying local dimensions in an engaging and empathetic manner? What role can visualization techniques play in this process? The conference brings together scholars, science communicators, curators, and artists drawing on Blue Humanities to explore human-water relationships while advancing three central goals: deepening the planetary dimension in the humanities, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to water studies, and developing innovative public communication strategies. Bremerhaven, with its strong maritime heritage, provides an ideal setting for these discussions. Hosted at the German Maritime Museum/Leibniz Institute of Maritime History (DSM) in the Bremerhaven Havenwelten, the conference seeks to illuminate the vital connections between people and water.

For questions, please contact one of the organizers, Dr. Katrin Kleemann (DSM), Dr. Noemi Quagliati (University Ca' Foscari, Venice), Dr. Fabienne Will (Deutsches Museum, Munich).