Critical Renewabilities

Critical Renewabilities is a framework for analyzing and advancing the equity and justice dimensions of the global renewable energy transition.

I've used this framework to examine how renewability is defined in policies like US Renewable Portfolio Standards - powerful state-level climate change policies that set targets and timelines for renewable energy procurement, and the European Renewable Energy Directive and Waste Directives. In those contexts, I sought to explain: (a) how state policymakers, regional political-economic interests, environmental interest groups, and communities selected to host renewable energy technologies negotiate competing knowledge claims about renewability, and (b) how the outcomes of those negotiations both reflect and produce uneven spatial patterns of benefit and burden. I also led a research lab at the University of California at Davis on this topic.

meet the members of the UC Davis Critical Renewabilities Lab

Our critical renewabilities scholarship has been published in:
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Energy Research & Social Science (here and here), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Case Studies in the Environment, Discard Studies, Euractive, Utility Dive, and Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. We have provided media interviews for popular outlets like Ensia and National Geographic, and our lab has written policy briefs like this one.

This work has been supported by:
Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research; Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation; EU Center of Excellence; University of California Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation; UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, the Environment, and the Economy; UC Davis Center for Regional Change; UC Davis Institute for Social Sciences; UC Davis Geography Graduate Group; UC Davis Graduate Studies; UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science.

Transit Subjectivities

How do embodied engagements with urban transit infrastructures and place-making histories affect transit planning politics?

Conducted in Oakland, California between 2011 and 2012, this research argues that a political ecology lens helps highlight how environmental and transit subjectivities – identities developed from everyday interactions with mobile and built environments – shape dispositions towards, and the politics around, mass transit projects. Published in: Journal of Transport Geography.

Park Connections

What barriers prevent young people from visiting open space parks? What can be done to minimize the barriers and connect young people to the outdoors?

Young people comprise a population whose opinions and needs are generally undervalued, and as a result, their voices are often muted or not even considered. The Park Connections project directly asks young people ages 14-18 about their experiences, ideas and hopes for the outdoors, and provides a broad survey of the wide range of physical, social, cultural, and economic factors that affect youth access to Bay Area open space parks. Published report: Park Connections: Increasing Access for Bay Area Youth.

Supported by: Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council; Marin Community Foundation.

Play in the City

How can aesthetic interventions with everyday infrastructure influence urban pedestrian interactions and affective relationships with place?

Play in the City chronicles my work to create wax rubbings of Vienna’s municipal water valve covers from the past 100+ years.  Inspired by Henri Lefebvre, Iris Marion Young, Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Alex Loftus, Bruno Latour and other critical urban thinkers, I aim to relate the mundane with the magnificent, and draw attention to the artistry and interactions that coalesce around everyday urban infrastructures, and the histories of those who create them. Shared on: PlayInTheCity.org.