On 20 October 2026, Jackie Ashkin successfully defended her PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled 'Brackish Knowledge: Materiality, Numerical Modelling, and the Politics of Knowing Coastal Futures'.
For her thesis, Jackie followed ocean researchers who study the Dutch coast to understand how they make computational models, what they learn from those models, and which resources are necessary for their development and use in science. Jackie explains:
'With models, scientists grasp times and geographies that might otherwise be beyond their reach, for example allowing them to peer months, years, or decades into the future to predict ocean circulations like those spanning the Atlantic. The material processes and properties of coastal environments, however, are complex and only partially understood, complicating the equations which scientists use to model and describe coastal changes.'
'Computational practices are part of and subject to wider systems of environmental and research governance.'
But there is more that comes to play in the making of models: 'While scientists are intimately aware of the strengths and limitations of their computational practices, these are nevertheless part of and subject to wider systems of environmental and research governance. In other words, the decisions about what to include in a model are driven by practical constraints-not only about what data and computing time are available, but also what funding and human labour researchers have access to.'
This means that in our knowledge of the future of the coast, three elements come together: 'The materiality of coastal environments; the intricacies of numerical modelling practices; and the institutional conditions of contemporary environmental and research governance. The confluences of research and environmental governance ultimately shape which lives are more valuable than others, which economies prosper, and whose worlds are worth protecting.'
Jackie Ashkin was a PhD candidate at the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University. Her doctoral research was part of the project FluidKnowledge, funded by the European Research Council and led by Sarah de Rijcke. Jackie was co-supervised by Sarah de Rijcke, Thomas Franssen, and Francesco Colona. Currently, she is postdoctoral researcher at the Delta Climate Center in Vlissingen, the Netherlands.
