EHN Talk | Stefano Dealessandri (Visual and Spatial Storyteller) — Amphibious Netherlands: A Suspicious Plot Twist

The final Environmental Humanities Network talk of the year is just around the corner - and yes, there will be drinks!

If that’s not enough to tempt you, the speaker and topic certainly will be: visual and spatial storyteller Stefano Dealessandri presents his latest research.

Amphibious Netherlands: A Suspicious Plot Twist

The research examines the Netherlands as a deltaic landscape shaped by centuries of drainage and land reclamation—projects that were both technical feats and ideological ventures. It shows how tools like windmills not only stabilized wetlands but also fueled industries, including shipbuilding, that supported seventeenth-century Dutch colonialism. Treating the swamp as both environment and concept, the study highlights its resistance to Western ideals of order, control, and hygiene.

In the present, the swamp reappears in Dutch politics as a zone of ecological adaptation and a metaphor charged with populist and Islamophobic fears. The research identifies an emerging “amphibious” approach in spatial planning and climate policy, reframing sea-level rise, subsidence, and water scarcity beyond fixed land–water divides. Drawing on colonial cartography, environmental history, and policy analysis, it positions the swamp as a vital lens for imagining more adaptive, interwoven futures.

Bio:

Stefano Dealessandri is a visual and spatial storyteller with a background in design, research, and architecture. He has been an artist-in-residence at Fabrica Research Centre and studied Communication Design at HAW Hamburg and Architecture at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, later completing an MFA at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. From 2019 to 2023, he was part of the curatorial team at Frappant Galerie in Hamburg. His work has been shown internationally, including at the Rotterdam Design Biennale (2025), Hot Docs Toronto (2024), re:publica Hamburg (2024), and the Fuori Biennale in Venice (2023). In 2025, his short film J’adore Venise received the Prix du Jury at the Grain Urban Festival in Paris.