1. CoSS PhD Scholarship – Energy Divides in Europe: identifying data injustices for transformative alleviation of energy policy
Project details
Soaring energy prices, exacerbated by COVID-19 and recent wars, have made energy poverty one of the biggest European policy challenges, and a key barrier to achieving the widely stated goal of just and sustainable energy transitions where no one is left behind. Vulnerable communities are not only largely excluded and sometimes negatively impacted by the energy transition but are increasingly facing a reality where living without energy is their new norm due to worsening socioeconomic and infrastructural conditions, with significant societal impacts.
These energy divides manifest in the use of alternative fuels for heating (such as firewood and household waste), forced energy rationing, and dangerous coping strategies. However, these issues are absent from mainstream indicators due to the dominance of narrow techno-economic frameworks that fail to account for the complexities of energy poverty. On a pan-European scale, the main policy indicators of energy poverty have remained almost entirely unchanged for nearly 30 years (Thomson et al., 2017), in turn creating exclusion biases within policies, meaning households that fall through the cracks in traditional conceptualisations of energy poverty may not receive support.
This PhD project will support the EnCUENTA project in assessing the gaps and data injustices perpetuated by official monitoring indicators of energy poverty across Europe, via in-depth reviews of code books for official surveys, and via secondary data analyses of these same surveys using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The project employs a critical quantitative research approach, with data feminism as an evaluative framework, which means acknowledging the role of data in reproducing (and disrupting) existing power relationships (Hatch et al., 2023), reviewing the rules embedded in the system(s), and identifying intervention points for more socially just data.
In collaboration with the wider team, the PhD researcher will have the opportunity to contribute to trialling innovative new indicators across national surveys in Germany, North Macedonia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Supervisory Team
Principal supervisor: Professor Harriet Thomson
Secondary supervisor/s: Dr Sergio Tirado Herrero (Autonomous University of Madrid)
School: School of Social & Political Sciences
Application details here
2. CoSS PhD Scholarship – Energy Divides in Europe: Mapping gaps in governing for transformative alleviation of energy poverty
Project details
Soaring energy prices, exacerbated by COVID-19 and the Russo-Ukrainian War, have made energy poverty one of the biggest European policy challenges, and a key barrier to achieving the widely stated goal of just and sustainable energy transitions where no one is left behind. Vulnerable communities are not only largely excluded and sometimes negatively impacted by the energy transition but are increasingly facing a reality where living without energy is their new norm due to worsening socioeconomic and infrastructural conditions, with significant societal impacts.
These energy divides manifest in the use of alternative fuels for heating (such as firewood and household waste), forced energy rationing, and dangerous coping strategies. However, these issues are absent from mainstream indicators due to the dominance of narrow techno-economic frameworks that fail to account for the complexities of energy poverty. On a pan-European scale, the main policy indicators of energy poverty have remained almost entirely unchanged for nearly 30 years (Thomson et al., 2017), in turn creating exclusion biases within policies, meaning households that fall through the cracks in traditional conceptualisations of energy poverty may not receive support. Energy poverty is an issue that has seen considerable political change, while also demonstrating significant conceptual stagnation with a high degree of ‘stickiness’ for subpar concepts and indicators, creating a situation where political rhetoric fails to match with current knowledge and tools.
Drawing from political science, in particular institutional analysis (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010) and policy inaction (McConnell & t’Hart, 2019), this project will construct comparative cases, at the local, national, and pan-European scales. This will involve in-depth reviews of relevant national and local policy documents and decision-making records within the just transition, climate, and energy domains, with attention paid to path dependency, political discourses, conceptualisations of energy poverty, and the strength of energy poverty-related policy targets. These reviews will be complemented with around 15-20 interviews with local, national, and pan-European policy stakeholders to understand policymakers’ attitudes about energy poverty, why suboptimal concepts and indicators have been enduringly ‘sticky’, and the barriers and potential levers for change.
Supervisory Team
Principal supervisor: Professor Harriet Thomson
Secondary supervisor/s: Dr Sergio Tirado Herrero (Autonomous University of Madrid)
School: School of Social & Political Sciences
Campus: Gilmorehill
European energy poverty governance and policy inaction – this PhD involves policy analysis and elite policymaker interviews, with attention paid to path dependencies, political discourses, and the strength of energy poverty-related policy targets.
Application details here