ENERGY AS A COMMONS Summer School co-organized by NKUA’s STS graduate program

Researchers from around the world participated in the ‘ENERGY AS A COMMONS’ International SUMMER SCHOOL at the Tzoumerka mountains, Epirus (late August to early September of 2022), which was financially supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 grant. It was co-organized by the P2P Lab of Tallinn University of Technology and the NKUA Interdepartmental Graduate Program ‘Science, Technology, Society – Science and Technology Studies (STS)” (Department of History and Philosophy of Science & Department of informatics and Telecommunications, School of Science).

The Summer School focused on the socio-technical transition from centralised and fossil-fuel-based energy technologies, which induce mass consumption, to an environmentally sustainable, decentralized and socially just energy economy. Facilitators and graduate/doctoral students co-created a learning environment to collaboratively investigate alternative technological and social trajectories under an energy commons framework.

The summer school included both theoretical and hands-on exploration of environmentally sustainable technological trajectories. The theoretical exploration was facilitated by Tallin University Professor Vasilis Kostakis, recipient of an ERC grant, and Dr. Chris Giotitsas. Professor David Hughes, Rutgers University, USA, and Professor Aristotle Tympas, director of the NKUA graduate program that co-organized the workshop, presented findings from the anthropology and the history of energy that confirm the potential of the aforementioned transition. The hands-on exploration included the collaborative building of parts of an open-source and small-scale wind turbine, through interdisciplinary inputs from both the human-social sciences and the engineering sciences and physics.

Pictures:

(1) Antonis Faras and Panagiotis Kazantzas, doctoral students at the NKUA History and Philosophy of Science Department, get a hands-on exposure to the socio-technical tradeoffs involved in designing and constructing a blade for an open-source and small-scale wind turbine.

(2)The Summer School participants pose in front of the small-scale wind turbine that they collaboratively constructed during the workshop evenings, under the guidance of engineer Kostas Latoufis, a world-class designer and builder of open-source wind energy turbines.

(3) Discussion facilitation by ERC grant recipient Vasilis Kostakis, co-organizer of the Summer School, Professor of P2P Governance at TalTech and Faculty Associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center.