Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group

IEC header overlaid a climate collage

The Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group, convened by PPEH’s Bethany Wiggin and Dr. Rebecca Macklin at the University of Edinburgh, aims to bring together researchers working directly with community-based partners to develop a picture of the varied and uneven impacts that stem from the international workings of energy industries. Our emphasis on intersecting energy cultures means that we seek to explore the impacts of industries including (but not limited to) petroleum, nuclear, gas, and coal as well as renewable energy forms. By thinking about the ways that these energy forms intersect, this working group will specifically attend to how communities are all too frequently caught in the middle of multiple and historically overlapping forms of energy production, which amplify existing social and economic vulnerabilities that include gender, race, and class. In developing this project through the experimental rubric of the environmental humanities, we seek to explore the ways that arts-driven and humanistic methods of inquiry might enable us to carry out meaningful community-based, participatory research around historic, contemporary and future relations with sites of energy production. Check back often for project updates and a growing list of resources!


Advisory Board Learn more about our advisory group of global experts here!


Working Group Members Read more about their projects!


Upcoming Events
On November 17-18th 2022 PPEH will host a two-day, hybrid workshop at the University of Pennsylvania for working group members and selected members of our International Advisory Board. You are warmly welcome at the opening roundtable for this workshop and the reception immediately following in the Kislak Center (6th floor) of Van Pelt Library. Working group members will share plans for research projects that explore the community-based impacts of various energy forms, bringing into dialogue perspectives on nuclear, petroleum, gas and coal industries, as well as renewable energy sources.

Register here!


Learn more about this project! 
Past Call for Participation, context
Field Notes, our scholarly blog
The Canopy: Resisting Extraction, episode three of our podcast