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I am Filippo Menga, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Bergamo in Italy, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Political Geography.

My research draws on political ecology, political geography, and development studies to advance an innovative approach to the study of water politics, particularly in relation to hydraulic infrastructure, global water networks and governance, and the dialectics of sustainability. 

My latest book – Thirst: The Global Quest to Solve the Water Crisis (Verso, 2025) – critically examines the contradictions of water governance. The book – which has also been translated into Italian – analyzes the neoliberalized, pseudo-religious, and technocratic solutionism deployed to ‘fix’ the global water crisis—an approach that ultimately reinforces the very inequalities, exploitation, and developmentalism it claims to address.

I have published articles on these topics in a wide range of academic journals, including Development and Change, Political Geography, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Area, Geoforum, Nationalities Papers, Water Alternatives, the Journal of Political Ecology, Ecology and Society, and Water Policy (find a full publications list here). I am the author of Power and Water in Central Asia (Routledge) and co-editor of Water, Technology and the Nation-State (Earthscan). I also co-edited Political Geography in Practice: Theories, Approaches and Methodologies (Palgrave Macmillan) and am a contributor to various international research collaborations, including projects funded by the European Commission and other major funding bodies.

From 2017 to 2021, I was Lecturer (until 2019) and then Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Reading in Great Britain, where I also led the Human Geography Research Cluster (2019-2020). I am currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading. Before that, I was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the Department of Geography of the University of Manchester, where I carried out the project “Dam-nations? A study on dams, nation-building and transboundary water relations through case studies from Ethiopia and Tajikistan” (DAM-NET, 2015-2017, €183,455). I have also held research and teaching positions at Oxford Brookes University, Tallinn University, the University of St Andrews, and King’s College London. Prior to my doctoral studies at the University of Cagliari (Italy), I worked as a UN Fellow for the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA) in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

Beyond my editorial role at Political Geography, I serve on the editorial boards of Global Networks, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, and Central Asian Survey. I regularly review for a range of academic journals and research organizations, including the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes. I also engage in public scholarship, contributing to policy discussions on water governance, nationalism, and environmental politics.

My contributions to research have been recognized with several awards, including the Scopus Early Career Researcher UK Award 2018 (Elsevier/US-UK Fulbright Commission) for outstanding research in Social Sciences.

(last updated: July 2025)