Participants in this course will gain an overview of the wide range of controversies involved in the ‘world water crisis’ and acquire a good understanding of a particular issue that they choose to research in depth. Over the past 10,000 years - the geological period of the Holocene – we have taken advantage of unusually stable climatic conditions to transform what is possible for our species. We tamed animals, developed agriculture, cities and nation states, learned to fly and expanded our numbers from a few million to over seven billion. New water technologies were essential for these changes and most of the world's hydrological systems have been significantly modified to increase our potential to supply food, generate energy, create transport routes and contain risks such as drought and flood. Continued enjoyment of those benefits, however, requires complex and continual human management. We have also disrupted the climate to such an extent that the planet is entering a new geological period, the Anthropocene Age, and many adverse climate change impacts are being experienced through water related events, droughts, floods, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, hurricanes and cyclones. The course focuses on the management of modified hydrological systems on a drastically modified planet - rivers, lakes, groundwater aquifers and tidal zones - where the the distribution of costs and benefits reflect political decisions that have serious consequences for the future of nations, communities and individuals. Case studies used in the course will consider trans-formative and disruptive technologies, the politics of cross-border rivers and large deltas, unsustainable groundwater extraction, policy capture by powerful stakeholders, the environmental, cultural and social impacts of water markets, debates about dams and other large water infrastructure, acid mine drainage, arsenic in groundwater,  public participation, gender, environmental refugees, sustainability (what is it?) and the roles of national governments and institutions such as the European Union, the World Bank and the United Nations.