Advances in fuel poverty research and practice: a pan-European early career researcher symposium

More than 40 young researchers from many European countries discussed fuel poverty phenomenon in European countries. More than 20 presentations were given by early career economists, sociologists, architectures and other social scientists.

Professor Stefan Bouzarovski (University of Manchester) delivered a lecture on changes in energy poverty, vulnerability and justice research. He focused on conceptual and methodological changes and mentioned possible policy changes in this research field. Professor highlighted the unanswered questions which should be raised in the future, e.g. how do we politicize fuel and energy poverty? how do we connect disparate debates in the energy poverty and justice domains?

Second key note speaker, Professor Benjamin K. Sovacool (University of Edinburgh), delivered a lecture on research trends in energy studies. He pointed out that social dimension of energy research is necessary because of need of understanding energy behavior and consumption, assessing technological risk and humanizing the impact of energy use. According to his research based on analysis of articles from energy journals, he revealed decompositions of topics for last 15 years and showed 12 under-represented topics.

The symposium gathered scientists such as: Sergio Tirado-Herrero (RMIT Europe, University of Manchester), David Deller (University of East Anglia), Nikolas Katsoulakos (National Technical University of Athens), Hyerim Yoon (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Sylvia Mandl (Vienna University of Economics and Bussiness), and others. IBS was represented by Agata Miazga and Katarzyna Sałach, who presented a forthcoming paper about fuel poverty variation in rural/urban areas and regions in Poland. After presentations the participants discussed in small groups unanswered questions in fuel poverty research. The aim of the discussion was to find out which problems should be addressed by fuel poverty research in the future

IBS presentation is attached below. All presentations are available online: link.