Events

Enacting socio-environmental reproduction and precarity

THESys Lecture by Saska Petrova

Tuesday, 24.10.2023, 14.00-15.45
Hybrid: IRI THESys, Rudower Chaussee 12B, 12489 Berlin, room 3.25, and via Zoom (m ID: 637 5414 2292, pw: 036305)

Developing the concepts of socio-environmental production and precarity, this presentation provides a feminist critique of ‘green transitions’ in Europe and beyond. Saska Petrova seeks to trace future research agendas on the ecofeminist agency emanating from precarious environments. She juxtaposes gendered forms of resistance to energy, on the one hand, with the broader literature on gendered injustices, movements and domestic activisms, on the other.

In the presentation, Saska Petrova will illuminate the politicization of energy-related injustices across various scales. Specifically, she will foreground home-community-city interface as the primary arena for experiencing and challenging energy provision shortages. She will discuss how energy-related injustices are created, felt, and challenged through different types of socio-environmental precarity.

Using evidence from a range of initiatives across Europe (principally drawn from the ENPOR and POWER UP projects, supported by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme), Saska Petrova will elucidate the interactional politics of socio-environmental reproduction and energy precarity, by linking the domestic and public geometries of power. In particular, she will examine community-based energy initiatives in Southeastern Europe, and broader struggles around domestic energy precarity across Europe more broadly.

Saska Petrova is a Reader at the Department of Geography, University of Manchester. Her research and policy work are situated at the intersection of energy, precarity and gender, underpinned by a wider interest in the political governance and contestation of social and environmental injustices. She has undertaken research in Greece, the UK, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, North Macedonia, South Africa and China. She has been involved as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator in over 20 research projects funded by the EU, several UK research councils, Royal Geographical Society, Cheshire Lehmann Fund and the Higher Education Academy. Findings from her research have been integrated in multiple policy documents and strategies, including the European Commission and Parliament, as well as the UK National Union of Students Welfare and Student Rights Strategy. Saska has published extensively on these issues, including a monograph on Communities in Transition (Routledge, 2014) as well as a number of articles in leading scientific journals. Her work has been highly cited and has received various awards, including the 2019 Jim Lewis Prize. She also has an extensive professional background as a public advocate and consultant for a range of government institutions and think tanks.

Picture credits: Saska Petrova