RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge, context and problemsheds: a critical realist method for interdisciplinary water studies Peter P. Mollinga Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London, UK ABSTRACT Understanding water issues as problemsheds addresses the nar- rowly water-centred framing of watershed and basin-focused water research and policy. In a critical realist approach problemshed also serves to identify the context-specifcity of water knowledge, by navigating between the extremes of positivist generalization and interpretivist local specifcity and bridging the divide between aca- demic and applied research by identifying the structural similarity in their problem framing. Problemshed is operationalized by situat- ing it in critical realism’s structures-mechanisms-events ontology, and by drawing on realist evaluation’s context-mechanism-out- come confgurations. I use large-scale canal irrigation in India to illustrate how this is done. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 23 June 2020 Accepted 23 June 2020 KEYWORDS Interdisciplinary water studies; problemshed; CMO configuration; critical realism; contextuality of knowledge Introduction Interdisciplinary water studies have no field-specific debate and literature on method (Mollinga & Gondhalekar, 2014). 1 The field is a patchwork of theoretical and thematic foci and approaches, mobilizing their methods from their respective ‘parent’ fields. There is thus, unsurprisingly, great methodological diversity in interdisciplinary water studies – in terms of philosophical underpinnings (ontology and epistemology), 2 research design and strategy, and research techniques. 3 Positivist, global data-set-based studies of water conflict (Gleditsch et al., 2004; Wolf, 1997) and multi-country comparative studies of water governance regimes (Bressers & Kuks, 2002) coexist with detailed ethnographies of water controversies in single cities, slums or valleys (Anand, 2012; Baviskar, 1995; Coelho, 2004, 2005), suggesting just some of the variations in scale, scope, purpose, technique and approach. Such diversity may be welcomed as a fruitful resource for addressing the multifarious dimensions of and puzzles associated with water. Much passion is, however, often invested in defending particular positions and disqualifying others. This can be readily observed in regional and international water meetings and conferences. 4 Such contro- versies are usually framed in binary, dichotomous ways. Two prominent and recurring binary stand-offs in research design for interdisciplinary water studies are large-data-set- based research versus case studies, and academic versus applied research. CONTACT Peter Mollinga pm35@soas.ac.uk WATER INTERNATIONAL https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2020.1787617 © 2020 International Water Resources Association