Skip to content
UEA Logo

About us

Our Approach

We work to increase awareness of water security issues and to foster positive change

The UEA Water Security Research Centre’s approach to water security centres on the need to understand the physical and social drivers and dynamics of contemporary global water challenges, and to recognise the multiple uses and benefits of water that need to be managed in any context.

Water security is therefore seen as intricately connected to critical global policy concerns, including safe drinking water provision, climate change, food security, energy generation and environmental protection. Centre members conduct research and consultancy, teaching and training, and outreach and policy engagement to increase awareness of water security issues and to foster positive change.

As well as researchers from the School of International Development, School of Environmental Sciences and School of Health Sciences, the Centre draws upon expertise from across the University of East Anglia including the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Norwich Medical School.

Norfolk Broad

We are committed to research that makes a genuine contribution to resolving major global challenges

Find out more about our current projects and people.

Yarmouk

We support learning that enables people to tackle water security issues and apply their understanding in a range of diverse settings and contexts

We offer short courses and support a range of postgraduate research candidates.

Find out more about our short courses and postgraduate research.

Flooded back garden in Derbyshire

We offer a range of consultancy services

We go beyond studying phenomena to bring about positive change by means of engagement through extensive outreach, commissioned training, action research and policy formation or guidance. For consultancy enquiries, please contact the Centre Director, Jo Geere using jo.geere@uea.ac.uk or watersecurity@uea.ac.uk ​in the first instance. Jo will help you identify members with the relevant expertise to support your project or requirements.

Previous clients have included:

The African Development Bank (ADB) | Anglian Water | Environment Agency for England and Wales | UK Department for International Development | UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) | Economic and Social Research Council | European Union (EU) | International Committee of the Red Cross | International Rivers | Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) | International Union for Conservation of Nature | International Water Management Institute | Medical Research Council (MRC) | Environment Research Council (NERC) | Oxfam | UK Water Industry Research Ltd (UKWIR) | United Nations Development Programme | The World Bank | WaterAid U.K. | Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) | The International Labour Organisation (ILO)

child collected water from an outside water tap

We collaborate with an established global network of researchers and build new research partnerships to conduct world class research, consultancy, and education.

Members of the Water Security Research Centre collaborate with an established global network of researchers and build new research partnerships to conduct world class research, consultancy, and education. We work with researchers from across UEA and from other U.K. and international universities, from stakeholder groups, government departments, industry, and international and non-government organisations working in sectors affected by water issues. A sample of our recent research project partnerships and are listed below.

Professor Roger Few and Dr Mark Tebboth are playing lead roles in the €6.7M project ‘DOWN2EARTH’ an EU project addressing water and food security challenges in the drylands of the horn of Africa. Their key role in the programme will be to gain a holistic understanding of people’s information needs; what would be useful to them, and how it can best be delivered, to make sure that technologies and tools developed by others in the consortium are appropriate, useful and grounded in the everyday realities of people who live and work in these dryland environments.

  • Professor Mark Zeitoun is running the third 3rd phase of the Yarmouk Futures Programme. This is establishing the Water Diplomacy Centre at the Jordan University of Science and Technology (Jordan’s top university), with a focus on training and research throughout the region.
  • Professor Timothy Osborne is PI for ‘INTEGRATE’; An integrated data-model study of interactions between tropical monsoons and extra-tropical climate variability.
  • Dr Helen He is PI for the SWARM project; Impacts Assessments to Support WAter Resources Management and Climate Change Adaption for China (SWARM)
  • Professor Paul Hunter, Iain Lake and Roger Few are collaborating with the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response at King’s College London.

Anglia Centre for Water Studies | Anglia Water | HWISE | Tyndal Centre | ClimateUEA | SUSTech University​

Where possible we have tried to credit and contextualise photography used on this site. Here is a list of practitioners that we have been privileged to collaborate with in order to create the work showcased on this site:

fieldwork set up