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Short abstract

Scientists are key actors in the process of imagining and making knowledge for more resilient aquatic futures. In the delta region of Zeeland, the Netherlands, efforts to create transdisciplinary knowledge highlight contestations around epistemic authority and what constitutes a ‘good’ future.

Long abstract

Deltas are environments where the fresh water of rivers meet the salty waters of the sea. As climate change accelerates, deltas are increasingly becoming frontiers where risk, expropriation, exploitation, and transformation are up for negotiation (Cons 2025). The Dutch province of Zeeland, situated in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta, is one such frontier. Once a series of islands at the river mouth, Zeeland now boasts one of the most extensive coastal defense infrastructures in the world. It is nevertheless one of the regions in the Netherlands most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels, increasing salinity in the soil, and freshwater scarcity. This raises serious concerns about the sustainability of maintaining manmade separations between land and sea.

In this context, scientists are key actors in the process of imagining and making knowledge for more resilient aquatic futures. Based on ethnography and interviews at a new transdisciplinary research center in Zeeland, this paper explores the tensions that emerge when developing new ways of making scientific knowledge. We ask, how are transdisciplinary collaborations imagined and constructed in practice? And what kinds of futures do they bring within reach? Focusing on research explicitly framed in terms of sustainability, resilience, and working across and beyond disciplinary boundaries, we highlight contestations around epistemic authority and what constitutes ‘good’ knowledge for resilient aquatic futures. Efforts to create transdisciplinary knowledge in Zeeland show that there are many heterogeneous ways of engaging with delta futures, what they should look like, and who they are for.