Tempelhoff, J W N2011-01-142011-01-142008TEMPELHOFF, J. 2008. Recent trends in South African water historiography. TD: The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 4(1):271-296, Jul. [http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/3605]1817-4434http://hdl.handle.net/10394/3932This article is based on a paper presented at the International Conference on Exploring transdisciplinary discourses: water society and the environment in Africa, 20-24 April 2008, at The Nest, Drakensberg, South Africa. The author is grateful to Heather Hoag who facilitated the process of preparing the text. Her comments and constructive proposals are appreciated.The discipline of water history is relatively young but since the 1990s there has been growing interest in the field. In this article an exposition is provided on the origins of the discipline of water history as a subdivision of environmental history. The discussion then turns to an outline of recent developments in the historiography of water history in South Africa. Attention is also given to the possibility of extending the study of this discipline into a number of allied fields.enHistoriographyWater historyEnvironmental historyTechnology historySouth Africaoutcomes based education (OBE)transdisciplinarity and methodologyArticle