The AMU Research Centre of Energy and Environmental Challenges is pleased to announce an open lecture by Professor Antti Silvast (LUT University) which will take place on Tuesday, 3 February at 9:30 in the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology on the Morasko Campus.
‘A new sociology of interdisciplinarity? Completing the public dimension of energy research‘
Abstract. In 2022, Antti Silvast and Chris Foulds published A Sociology of Interdisciplinarity, in which they developed a framework for examining the social dynamics of large-scale interdisciplinary energy research projects, based on case studies from the UK, Norway and Finland. The book analysed how different disciplines collaborate in practice, including how the public is represented in research — typically through economic proxies such as willingness-to-pay, which render everyday energy practices invisible. However, the authors stopped short of fully theorising the implications of these representational choices for energy participation and democracy itself.
Meanwhile, public support research is resurging across energy research in the Nordic countries. However, it is consistently framed as ‘acceptance research’, treating citizens as obstacles to be overcome rather than participants in energy transitions. While this framing is understandable, it is incomplete in that it focuses on a communication challenge rather than recognising the processes involved in collective decision-making about energy futures.
Drawing on his experiences in building interdisciplinary research at LUT University and recent work with colleagues (a forthcoming theme issue in Science as Culture, submitted work with Mark Winskel and a large Finnish Strategic Research Council project called Material Democracy), Silvast argues for a fundamental update to our research agenda. We need to move beyond perception-focused approaches that treat public engagement as a knowledge deficit to be corrected through better communication. Building on American pragmatism and the work of Noortje Marres, he proposes material participation as an alternative, recognising that public participation is enacted not only through deliberation and voting, but also through everyday engagement with energy devices, practices and infrastructures. Silvast argues that research frameworks which only capture linguistic participation or economic proxies miss how the public is already engaged with energy systems, foreclosing possibilities for the genuine social shaping of energy transitions.
Antti Silvast is an associate professor at LUT University, Finland, specializing in energy infrastructure and science and technology studies. He is the deputy director of the Material Democracy project https://materialdemocracy.fi/en and leads a work package on participation in future planning.
The lecture is part of a series supported by AMU ID-UB under number 198 (Support for HumSoc Centres).
