Kenner, Ali, Briana Leone, and James Adams. 2020. "Energy in COVID-19," In Housing Energy. Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography.
The Energy Vulnerability Project had been collaborating with the Transnational-STS group on one of the PECE instances, the Disaster Network, on collaborative forms of research. During the several bi-weekly meetings the transnational research group discussed ways to conduct digital research, shifting research forms during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also held research expositions for each STS scholar that participated in the meetings. Among these scholars, there were several energy scholars who created the Energy in COVID-19, also gave rise to bi-weekly research briefs. The goal of these research briefs is to compile articles in the news that relate to energy, energy distribution, energy transitions, utilities, or any other topic of the like in the two weeks prior to the publication of each brief. At the continued development of the pandemic, news headlines were dominated by articles that talked about vulnerabilities experienced by people in the United States, across different social areas (health, education, employment, bill payment, COVID-19 risk of infection, etc.).
Energy in COVID-19 is a collaborative research group working within the Transnational-STS COVID-19 project. The Energy in COVID-19 working group aims to share research and resources focused on energy infrastructures, transitions, vulnerability, and justice; we welcome researchers from any discipline. Our working group hosts a monthly reading group, as well as weekly working group meetings to share research updates. Both are held using Zoom video conferencing and utilize a digital workspace.
We invite project participants to adopt one or more of the project’s shared research questions to address in a particular setting, or across settings. Alternatively (or additionally) participants can adopt a setting (at any scale), responding to all questions of interest. Participants can also add research questions, or respond to questions with a pointer to comparative examples or relevant theory and concepts. In other words: there are many ways to participate, in delimited or extensive ways.
A good point of entry to the project is to begin annotating the Energy in COVID-19 essay by responding to one (or more) of the questions in our Scales and Systems analytic. Some of the other tasks to be performed as a group participant consist of looking over research findings, sharing their own research findings, doing collaborative writing, and gathering relevant artifacts. To expand the projects we plan on conducting monthly reading shares and bi-weekly meetings on research reports and project updates.
In this essay you may find a collection of text artifacts to deepen your knowledge on the multifaceted nature of energy, specifically how energy has impacted and been impacted by COVID-19.
The Energy in COVID-19 group has also collaboratively worked on the energy vulnerability survey administration and analysis. Working on the survey between June and October, the research group has worked on identifying findings and points of revision on the survey questions. Below you may find an essay that details the work performed on the survey and as it presently continues.
- Energy in COVID-19 Research Group Meetings: 02:00pm EST every Monday
The Energy in COVID-19 group is a smaller research group within the larger T-STS group with the aim to establish scholarly community on energy and COVID-19. The Energy in COVID-19 group conducts weekly calls to discuss most recent findings in the energy field and as specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The products of these weekly discussions are also occasionally reported back to the T-STS larger group, when applicable and relevant to larger discussions, and are collected in a shared meeting notes document, as attached below. In early June, June 16th to be exact, the Energy in COVID-19 group also hosted a shared reading discussion on Dr. Powell’s work Landscapes of Power, with Dr. Powell coming in to discuss any questions the group had about the research and implications shown. Similar shared readings continue to occur, like the more recent reading of The Birth of Energy discussed on October 26th. Additionally, the Energy in COVID-19 group works on bi-weekly research briefs, published in timeline styles, as a collaborative shared research. All and any discussion pertaining to energy and Covid-19 occurs in relation to research briefs discussions, in relation to survey results, and to larger prospects of The Energy Vulnerability project.
