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Walking the Euphrates is a hybrid program that hosts conversations centering the Euphrates River as an active witness and record.

The Euphrates River, from its many source to its confluence, is a site of deep and layered water relations, cultures, languages, ecologies and histories, as well as political struggles and violent processes of extractivism and ecological changes.

In Syria, during the Assad regime’s violent assaults and siege on the city of Deir ez-Zor and amid competing military factions fighting for control, the Euphrates became one of the first targets. Its flow was controlled and reshaped, while the bridges and waterways that had long connected its shores were systematically destroyed. 

Through different forms of gathering Walking the Euphrates traces the political, personal, architectural, ecological and metaphysical layers of memory and struggle embedded in and entangled with this shared water. The programme seeks to learn from and share situated forms of knowledge, while tracing water solidarities and common struggles across places and communities.

The first iteration took place during Research Week 2025 at SLARG, Sint Lucas Research Group.
The second iteration is coming soon.