Energy Transitions, Pedagogy, Degrowth

This is Day 1 of a two-day event on the cultures, concepts and pedagogies of Energy Transitions. It will take place in H204 in UCD's Humanities Institute.

This event is hybrid, and it is free but ticketed. Food and beverages will be provided.

June 5th, National Energy Transitions, Pedagogy, Degrowth

11am-1230pm Irish Energy Transitions: A Roundtable

This roundtable will briefly give an overview of the major frictions, historical legacies, and promised future outcomes of energy transitions in Ireland. It will dwell on how communities have been affected by, and understand, the 'just transition' following the closure of peat-based electricity industries in the midlands; how communities have engaged with restoration efforts after the exhaustion of peat; national activism against fossil fuel use and extraction; and the government's current plans for off- and onshore renewable energy. Prof Sheena Wilson (Alberta), will then offer a short response based on her own interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to studying energy and extractivism in Canada.

Speakers: Lily Toomey (Trinity College Dublin), Dylan Murphy (University College Dublin), Tomas Buitendijk (University College Dublin), Aoife Kirk (Community Wetlands Forum), Sheena Wilson (University of Alberta)

1230-2PM LUNCH

1400-1700 The Degrowth University: A Workshop

Facilitated by Nick Lawrence, Pablo Mukherjee, Jonathan Skinner

This workshop will examine the research university’s relation to degrowth. What is the relationship between today’s institutional sites of knowledge production (including on degrowth itself) and a degrowth future?

This workshop, curated by colleagues affiliated with Warwick University’s (UK) Critical Environments research cluster, is an invitation to model ways of degrowing the research university. Participants will work together to produce degrowth syllabi and curricula, write degrowth job descriptions, imagine degrowth governance and administration, model degrowth recruitment and admissions policies, and sketch out degrowth research agendas. In so doing, we will explore the possibility of thinking about degrowth as one of the key catalysts for academic activism, rather than a movement that drives academics and activists apart.

A full schedule for the workshop and readings is available here: https://texerenetwork.com/justtransitions/call-for-papers/