Project description
Socio-material change in unruly energy environments
Energy is crucial for addressing climate change, but clean power plants alone are insufficient. The energy sector is influenced by geopolitics, injustices, environmental changes, and development efforts, making research on socio-material change essential. The ERC-funded UNRULY project aims to develop a new analytical framework that integrates social and material aspects to better understand change and address justice issues. The project will create a new theory of socio-material change, develop innovative research methods, advance empirical research on energy frontiers, and reframe governance in complex contexts. It seeks to explore how power manifests through uncertainties, knowledge, social relations, and governance challenges. The project will provide new insights into hydropower energy frontiers in Nepal and Zambia.
Objective
Energy is foundational to climate change adaptation and mitigation goals, but the present moment requires more than clean power plants. Energy frontiers are entangled in uncertain geopolitics, injustices, environmental change, and development efforts, raising the stakes for research on sociomaterial change. UNRULY aims to create a paradigm-shifting, new analytical framework of change, one that transcends disciplinary conceptual boundaries to hold the social and the material together theoretically and methodologically. Grounded in justice issues, the project has four objectives: innovate a new theory of sociomaterial change through ‘unruliness’; create new research methods to analyse sociomaterial change; advance empirical research on energy frontiers; and reframe what requires governing in unruly contexts. UNRULY creates a novel theoretical basis for understanding how power materialises through uncertainties, knowledges, uneven social relations, (colonialism, racism, class, patriarchy) and governance challenges. Methodologically, the project is carefully designed to build towards the higher-risk, high-gain dimensions. The work will contribute fresh insights on hydropower energy frontiers in two case studies (Nepal and Zambia) and develop new methods capable of analysing variables and processes defined as inherently sociomaterial. The results aim to tease out an analytical basis for democratic debate on the tension between efforts at prediction and governing change, and uncertainty and unruliness which can derail those efforts. The PI will lead an international, cross-disciplinary research team, comprised of two postdoctoral fellows, two PhD candidates, three research affiliates, and an advisory board of international academic leaders, boldly challenging existing research conventions on sociomaterial change and reimagining novel approaches to our shared planetary crisis.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology governance
- social sciences sociology gender studies
- social sciences sociology social issues social inequalities racial inequality
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy hydroelectricity
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
0313 Oslo
Norway
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.