–?Which research project are you most preoccupied with?
– The project taking the most of my time is the ERC Advanced Grant funded UNRULY: Unruly entanglements of sociomaterial change, knowledge, and power in energy frontiers (ERC, UNRULY, 101142262). We are in the starting phase now with lots of exciting things happening. This project looks at how efforts to promote green energy can result in unexpected social and material outcomes and uncertainties.
–?What do you hope to find out?
– This project has an ambition to advance theoretical and methodological approaches to uncertainty and socio-environmental change. We are trying to bring together thinking on uncertainty from more technical and quantitative sciences, with social science and humanities thinking on uncertainty and emergence. We have three case studies. In Nepal and Namibia we are looking at hydropower developments and their relationships to geopolitics, climate change, the state, development and peoples’ ambitions for a better life. In Norway, we are looking at both hydropower infrastructures and mineral exploitation for energy transition with many of the same themes informing them. These sites in Norway are especially important for the methodological development aspect of the work since they are easier to access than those abroad.
– Why is this important?
– Over the past twenty years there have been significant theoretical advances across the social sciences and humanities that avoid making a separation between society and environment. Understanding socioenvironments (or socionatures) as entangled and co-produced shifts research attention from impacts of societies on environments, to the moments and spaces wherein change occurs. Retaining a theoretical separation means that work documenting societal impacts on environment are missing the vital processes through which particular impacts come to be seen as relevant in the first place. They also potentially misdiagnose which drivers of change are the most important ones. Instead, socionature approaches look for new entanglements, how particular social and material processes collide or emerge, and the actions within which both social meanings and material changes occur simultaneously.
– Methodological approaches have not kept pace with these theoretical advances. Modelling approaches retain a theoretical separation even if they attempt to be integrative, and qualitative social science approaches are similarly constrained.
– Our team is working with acoustic methods, multi-modal ethnography, stochastic resonance and other approaches to try to bring theoretical advances into methodological approaches to socioenvironmental change.
– And while there is a lot of research attention on the energy transition, there is surprisingly little in-depth work done that combines social science, humanities and more technical concerns related to hydropower. In Nepal, there have really only been two major in-depth case studies done, both of which were place based as part of PhD theses, and even less in-depth work has been in Namibia. Most work has been done outside the academic space or are only technical in nature.
–?Who are you collaborating with?
– The team for the project was hired this autumn. We are a dynamic, international team, of two PhDs and two postdoctoral fellows, myself all based here in Oslo. Two of the team members are from the United States, one from Norway and one from Nepal. Intellectually we are also diverse with backgrounds in Geography, Public Policy, Engineering, Anthropology, Peotry, Cultural Studies and Development. This diversity makes for lively and intellectually productive staff meetings.
– We also collaborate with an international team based at other institutions including Helene Ahlborg who is an expert on social science aspects of renewable energy projects based at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Mabel Gergan who is an expert on Himalayan hydropower investments, Indigenous knowledge and socioenvironmental change from Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University in the USA, Aaron Rice who is an expert in bioacoustics in aquatic environments and works at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in the USA. Our board includes: Rahul Ranjan, School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, Dipak Gyawali, Nepal Academy of Science & Technology, Nepal, Tatiana Grandón - Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Giulia Di Nunno, Mathematics, University of Oslo, Norway, Tim Forsyth, London School of Economics, UK, Rose Keller, Norwegian Institute of Nature Research, Norway, Andrew Stirling, Sussex University, UK. Our project manager, Ting J. Yiu is a writer of fiction- non fiction and poetry.
–?What do you look for when choosing collaborators?
– The most important quality in a collaborator is their ability to think outside the box. I look for creative, wide-ranging thinkers who have an interest in engaging inter-disciplinarily and who ask questions rather than suggesting they have all the answers. Of course, it is great when they can bring their expertise to the table as well, but the group is often treading into domains where none of us could possibly have all the necessary expertise. Managing a group like that requires me to give them a lot of freedom to unleash their creativity while also keep us all pulling in the same direction. It is important to me that we can have fun as a team. That latter quality is one that comes over time.
–?What other research projects are you involved in?
– I am a collaborator on a large project based at the School of Global Studies in Gothenburg, Sweden on climate and migration. This work builds from my long-term research on climate change adaptation and includes my colleagues in Nepal who I have worked with for over a decade now. These colleagues are not directly involved in UNRULY but I am trying to make ways for us to be in dialogue since we co-produce so much of our thinking and work together.
– I also have long term work on climate change adaptation in Nepal with a particular emphasis on the forestry sector. My new projects are all somehow related to that work, even if the focus has shifted somewhat. During my recent visit to Nepal I was surprised how often hydropower was mentioned when I was talking to people about forestry and vice versa!
–?What do you think is the most interesting aspect of being a researcher?
– I love doing fieldwork because it requires creativity, interaction with many different kinds of people, witnessing new places and infrastructures, and in my case, usually requires me to spend a lot of time outside. I also really enjoy the process of analysis after data collection.
- Read more: Fourth prestigious ERC grant to SV faculty