International Conference ENTANGLED SEASCAPES: MORE-THAN-HUMAN HISTORIES ACROSS OCEANIC WORLDS

International Conference ENTANGLED SEASCAPES: MORE-THAN-HUMAN HISTORIES ACROSS OCEANIC WORLDS Academia Belgica Rome · 22-24 January 2026.

Luci Attala, Deputy Executive Director of BRIDGES, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, will be presenting the paper Listening to the Bubbles: How Water Answers in Indigenous Kogi Epistemology. Sharing Ways of Knowing through Relational and More-than-Human Histories, at this upcoming conference in Rome.

This conference explores pre-modern and early modern oceanic worlds (from the Atlantic to the Pacific) through the blue humanities. It moves beyond land-centric history to view the sea as an active, "more-than-human" agent shaped by both human and non-human actors.  The conference invites papers that "rethink histories of civilisation, encounters, and sovereignties from ocean‑centred perspectives that challenge dominant land-based narratives that have long informed historiography."

Key themes 

• Oceanic materialities: boats, corals, shells, and sea-assemblages 

• Sea deities, spirits, and cosmologies in art, architecture, and ritual 

• Oral and literary traditions: the sea as danger, promise, or divine force 

• Archaeologies of marginal maritime communities (fisherfolk, pirates, boatbuilders, islanders, sea-nomads) 

• Indigenous, subaltern, and local knowledge systems connected to seafaring and/or oceanic life 

• More-than-human entanglements in past seascapes: marine animals, currents, winds, tides, and reef

The event seeks to challenge traditional narratives of sovereignty by investigating how shifting focus to the "oceanic edge" redefines material culture and the emotional, cognitive experience of the maritime past.

The Abstract for Luci’s paper can be read below:

Listening to the Bubbles: How Water Answers in Indigenous Kogi Epistemology. Sharing Ways of Knowing through Relational and More-than-Human Histories

Abstract:

This paper explores what it means to listen in contexts where knowledge is relational, ecological and more-than-human. Drawing on collaborative research with Kogi communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, it examines how water itself participates as an active agent in processes of knowing and communicating. Within Kogi epistemology, bubbles rising in rivers and lagoons are not inert physical phenomena but answers - responses within a living dialogue between humans, ancestors and the landscape. By tracing these exchanges, the paper considers how Indigenous listening practices challenge dominant paradigms that separate subject from object, observer from environment. “Listening to the bubbles” becomes both a method and a metaphor: an invitation to attend to the subtle, fluid ways that knowledge circulates between beings, elements and times. Through this case, I propose that sharing ways of knowing defies translation and requires attunement, a slowing down and deep relational listening that acknowledges the agency of place and the multiplicity of histories held within water. This approach offers insights for developing more inclusive, responsive, and ecologically grounded understandings of knowledge in the Anthropocene. 

Luci Attala is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) and currently serves as Deputy Executive Director of the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition, leading the UK BRIDGES Hub at UWTSD. Her research focuses on the materiality of water and the entanglements between humans and the environment, using a New Materialities framework. She has conducted fieldwork in Spain, Wales, and among the Giriama horticulturalists in coastal Kenya, where her work earned a United Nations Gold Star Award for its social and environmental impact. She is currently collaborating with the Kogui in Colombia on a conservation water project titled Munekán Masha ("Let it be reborn") and is co-lead on an AHRC-funded mission award: REPAIR, Retrofitting for the Future: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Adaptation.

The conference is convened by Matthew Cobb, University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Daniela De Simone, Universiteit Gent.