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Dr Oliver Hensengerth

Associate Professor

Department: Geography and Environmental Sciences

Oliver joined ϲ in January 2012. Before joining Northumbria, he was a Lecturer in China and Global Politics at the University of Southampton and taught at the Universities of Warwick and Essex. He also won a 2-year post-doc fellowship (Transatlantic Postdoc Fellowship for International Relations and Security) hosted by SAIS/Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, IEEI Lisbon, and Chatham House London. Furthermore, Oliver conducted consulting work for London-based Global Witness and for Germany’s GIZ.

Oliver’s research rests on two pillars: firstly, the rise of China in global development, with a focus on Chinese investment in water infrastructure; and secondly water governance, including transboundary water cooperation, water-energy-food nexus, floods and droughts, and hydropower. Conceptually, he is interested in questions of environmental justice, relationships between water and identity, multilevel governance, and governance across scales. Oliver teaches across programmes in International Relations, Geography and and Global Development and supervises PhD students in the above research areas. Oliver is a member of the Northumbria Centre for Global Development (www.northumbria.ac.uk/cid).

Oliver Hensengerth

Campus Address

Lipman 312
City Campus
Newcastle
NE1 8ST

Oliver works at the intersection of international relations and international development. Having been trained as a political scientist, Oliver’s work is interdisciplinary. He has been collaborating closely with colleagues from engineering, physical and human geography, or sociology in projects funded by the British Academy, GCRF, Newton Fund, and others. He has published extensively in international high impact journals in the areas of environmental and water governance.

Oliver's research rests on two pillars: firstly, the rise of China in global development, with a focus on Chinese investment in water infrastructure such as hydropower in countries of the global South; and secondly water governance, including transboundary water cooperation, water-energy-food nexus, floods and droughts, and hydropower. Conceptually, he is interested in questions of environmental justice, relationships between water and identity, multilevel governance, and governance across scales.

Oliver is currently lead investigator in the ISPF-British Council project Adapting Crisis Responses to Salt-Droughts in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam (partner: Can Tho University, 2024-2026); and a co-investigator in the Innovate UK project FITS Power Plant - Cambodian Island Community, led by Achelous Energy (2024-2025). Recently expired projects include the GCRF Research Hub Living Deltas, led by Newcastle University (2019-2024); British Council COP26 Trilateral Research Initiative Integrated Strategies for Water Resources Risk Management in the ASEAN Region under Climate Uncertainty: A Needs Assessment, led by Southampton University (2021-2022); and Newton-NERC Viet Nam: Slow Onset Hazard Interactions with Enhanced Drought and Flood Extremes in an At-Risk Mega Delta, led by Southampton University (2019-2021).

  • Angelica Ribichini A Critical Intersectional Analysis of Youth Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta Start Date: 18/01/2021
  • April McAlpine Finding the Fountain: Neoliberalism and the possibility of alternatives for water provision in Tamil Nadu Start Date: 12/03/2014
  • Gabriele Giovannini THE IMPACT OF MULTINATIONAL TRANSBOUNDARY INFRASTRUCTURES (MTIs) ON THE RELATIONAL POWER OF SMALL STATES: A CASE STUDY OF LAOS Start Date: 12/09/2014 End Date: 11/04/2018
  • Benita Siloko Human security, Livelihoods and Environmental Degradation in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria. Start Date: 01/10/2019

  • International Politics PhD September 01 2006
  • Fellow (FHEA) Higher Education Academy (HEA) 2014


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