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Walking the Euphrates is a hybrid format for hosting and sharing research work centered on the Euphrates River as an active witness and record.

The Euphrates River, from its 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 was among the first targets. Its flow was controlled and reshaped, and the bridges and waterways that once connected its shores were systematically destroyed. The Suspended Bridge, once a symbol of post-coloniality and later of the 2011 uprisings, was shelled in 2013, leaving only three columns standing, suspended midair. Whoever controlled the water and its crossings controlled movement and life itself.

Through multidisciplinary research and forms of gathering, talks, memory walks, collaborations, readings and listening, this format traces political, personal, architectural, ecological and metaphysical layers of memory, struggle and resistance embedded and entangled in this shared water, to learn from and share knowledge, to trace water solidarities and common struggles.

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