Veronica Strang

Veronica Strang is an author and professor of anthropology affiliated to Oxford University. Her work combines cultural anthropology with environmental studies, and focuses on the relationship between human communities and their environments. Strang's publications include Uncommon Ground (1997), The Meaning of Water (2004), Gardening the World (2009), What Anthropologists Do (2009, 2021), Water (2015), and Water Beings (2023).

Strang completed her PhD at Oxford in 1995, which led to the publication of Uncommon Ground (1997). Between 1994 and 1997, Strang taught at the Department of Anthropology and the Pitt Rivers Museum, while also conducting research at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute.¹ She then helped to establish a new Anthropology Department at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

In 2000, Strang received an award for the Royal Anthropological Institute Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology. She moved to New Zealand shortly after this to take up professorial posts at Auckland University of Technology and then Auckland University, and this enabled further research on water issues in New Zealand and Australia.

Strang returned to the UK in 2012 to take up a role as the executive director of Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study. She also served as the Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth from 2012 to 2017.¹ She is now based in Oxford.

Much of Strang's work focuses on people's beliefs and values in relation to water, and how these drive sustainable or unsustainable practices. Her publication, The Meaning of Water, has become a key text in this area, and she has since worked on multiple projects that examine how different groups, including indigenous communities, engage with water.²

Being founded in cultural anthropology Strang's work maintains a close interest in how material culture and the materiality of water overlap. Her work is also interdisciplinary, drawing on archaeology, history, theology, psychology and the cognitive sciences. As the director of a research institute spanning the entire academic spectrum (2012–2022), she has also written extensively about interdisciplinarity itself, and she continues to encourage collaborative research as an advisor to a number of institutes and funding councils internationally.

Strang has done considerable work on water issues with UNESCO and with the United Nations, most recently working with the UN's High Level Panel on Water providing input about cultural and spiritual issues in relation to water. She has also assisted indigenous communities in Australia, and the Maori Council, with land and water claims, so may be considered as a public anthropologist. In keeping with this, her research aims for outcomes that are for the benefit of the environment and for the communities with whom she works.

• Royal Anthropological Institute Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology, 2000
• International Water Prize, UNESCO, 2007
• HEFCE's national Interdisciplinary Advisory Panel Fellowship, 2017
• Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK, 2013–2017
• Election as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, 2019.

• Strang, Veronica (1997). Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values. New York University Press.³⁴
• Strang, Veronica (2004). The Meaning of Water. Berg/Bloomsbury.⁵
• Strang, Veronica (2009). Gardening the World: Agency, Identity, and the Ownership of Water. Berghahn.⁶⁷
• Strang, Veronica (2015). Water: Nature and Culture. Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press.⁸⁹
• Strang, Veronica (2021) [2009]. What Anthropologists Do. Berg/Bloomsbury.¹⁰
• Strang, Veronica (2023). Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis. Reaktion Press.¹¹¹²

• Strang, Veronica; Busse, Mark, eds. (2011). Ownership and Appropriation. Berg.¹³
• Johnston, B.; Hiwasaki, L.; Klaver, I.; Ramos-Castillo, A.; Strang, Ceronica, eds. (2012). Water, Cultural Diversity and Global Environmental Change: Emerging Trends, Sustainable Futures?. Springer and UNESCO.
• Fardon, VeronicaRichard; Harris, Olivia; Marchand, Trevor H. J.; Nuttall, Mark; Shore, Cris; Strang, Veronica; Wilson, Richard A., eds. (2012). The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology. Vol. 1–2. SAGE Publications.¹⁴
• Strang, Veronica; Edensor, T.; Puckering, J., eds. (2018). From the Lighthouse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Light. Routledge.

• Krause, F.; Strang, Veronica, eds. (2013). "Living Water: the powers and politics of a vital substance (Special Issue)". Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology. 17 (2).
• Krause, F.; Strang, Veronica, eds. (2016). "Thinking Relationships Through Water (Special Issue)". Society and Natural Resources. 29 (6).