What energy is for: the making and dynamics of demand

Conference and PhD workshop

In April 2016 we hosted 150 delegates from over 20 countries at our international conference, providing a collective opportunity to extend and deepen research on the making and dynamics of energy demand. The conference included a mix of different format workshops, debates, an infrastructure ‘walkshop’ and poster displays. It was preceded by a PhD workshop organised by DEMAND PhD students involving a range of activities including (rainy) field work around the university campus. The resources provided here capture these events in different ways, including written versions of most of the papers that were presented – and a irreverent mini-ethnography of the conference ‘tribe’.

Conference programme
83 conference papers onlineBreakout above
PhD workshop
Three debates
Infrastructure ‘Walkshop’
Methodology and practice theory session
Social activities
Photo competition
#DEMAND2016
Summary points from the workshops
An ethnography of the conference
DEMAND conference gallery

Conference programme

The core of the conference programme consisted of workshops, of different durations, organised into parallel streams. The full list of workshop sessions and presentations is available from the EasyChair website, or as a downloadable PDF. 

Three debates

We tried out a debate format – 5 mins for and against – which got into thorny questions and proved lots of fun. Many thanks to the willing debaters.

1st plenary debate  –  We could have more fun if we use a lot less energy.
FOR: Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck College, University of London) AGAINST: Rosie Day (University of Birmingham)

2nd plenary debate – If policy matters to demand reduction then understanding practices of policy making matters more than the practices we might seek to change.
FOR: Jillian Anable (University of Leeds)   AGAINST: Jim Watson (UK Energy Research Centre)

3rd plenary debate – “The rich! The rich! We’ve got to get rid of the rich!”: The most effective way to reduce energy demand is to remove wealth from the 1%.
FOR: Duncan McLaren (Independent Consultant & Lancaster University) AGAINST: Tim Schwanen (University of Oxford)

Methodology and practice theory session

The panel discussed and debated the relationship between methodology and practice theory. While recent interest in practice theories has prompted a range of theoretical contributions and empirical studies, discussions of methodology have been comparatively lacking. Important questions remain, however, about whether the ‘status quo’ of social scientific methods suffices for those engaging with practice theory, and how further experimentation or innovation might spark new theoretical or empirical insights.

The panel members, including Ben Anderson, Alison Browne, Russell Hitchings, and Frank Trentmann, discussed their own work and engaged with several propositions presented by the organisers, Allison Hui and Hilmar Schäfer, who have also established a related blog where propositions and additional written contributions to the discussion can be read.

Capture2

 

Social activities

Floorball

 

Evening dining at Lancaster Brewery

Photo competition

Breakout 2As part of the conference participants were encouraged to submit entries for a photographic competition. and the judges were presented with an impressive collection of over 40 images.  Photographs were to relate to the theme of one of the workshops and to see the complete categorised collection please follow the link DEMAND2016 Photo Competition

1st place: Sylvie Douzou

2nd place: Stefan Bouzaroski

3rd place: Sylvie Douzou

Douzou workshop 9 Stefan Bouzarovski 6 Douzou worrkshop 11 - 2

#DEMAND2016

    • 286 tweets (+ lots of retweets) from 43 people/twitter accounts
      • Including a twitter re-tweet bot: Sabrina Robertson@sanikiforova312
    • Top tweeters: 1. Claire Hoolohan (with 31 tweets), 2. Chris Foulds (with 28 tweets), 3. Cecily Maller (with 23 tweets).
    • #DEMAND2016 become new UK trending topic Thursday April 13th at 6.07pm
    • Most re-tweeted and most liked tweet was Andrew Glover’s “conference bingo”
    • View Storify to watch DEMAND 2016 as it happened.

 

Summary points from the workshops

It’s impossible to summarise a conference with so many papers covering so many topics. However, the convenors of the 13 workshops were asked to come up with two highlight points that said something cross-cutting about the content of their workshops.  

Click on the image to view the presentation

Click on the image to view the presentation

Click on the image to view the presentation

 

And some feedback from one of our happy participants….

“I just wanted to pass on how much I enjoyed the DEMAND conference. I found it to be a very warm, friendly and very intellectually stimulating event. Congratulations to you and all of the organisers and helpers for a wonderful event that I am sure has inspired many and built some exciting new connections and research directions.”