Books

Smart grids are a complex phenomenon involving new, active roles for consumers and prosumers, novel social, political and cultural practices, advanced ICT, new markets, security of supply issues, the informational turn in energy, valuation of assets and investments, technological innovation and (de)regulation. Furthermore, smart grids offer new interfaces, in turn creating hybrid fields: with the increasing use of electric vehicles and electric transportation, smart grids represent the crossroads of energy and mobility. While the aim is to achieve more sustainable production, transportation and use of energy, the importance of smart grids actually has less to do with electricity, heat or gas, and far more with transforming the infrastructure needed to deliver energy, as well as the roles of its owners, operators and users.

This book presents a cross-disciplinary approach to smart grids, offering an invaluable basis for understanding their complexity and potential, and for discussing their technical, legal, economic, societal, psychological and security aspects. Book from Springer.

Today we are witnessing dramatic changes in the way scientific and scholarly knowledge is created, codified, and communicated. This transformation is connected to the use of digital technologies and the virtualization of knowledge. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines consider just what, if anything, is new when knowledge is produced in new ways. Does knowledge itself change when the tools of knowledge acquisition, representation, and distribution become digital?

Issues of knowledge creation and dissemination go beyond the development and use of new computational tools. The book, which draws on work from the Virtual Knowledge Studio, brings together research on scientific practice, infrastructure, and technology. . The contributors combine an appreciation of the transformative power of the virtual with a commitment to the empirical study of practice and use.

Book from MIT Press.

Current book project: As we face multiple environmental crises, this book proposes a shift from a focus on monitoring nature for extractive or protective purposes, to a focus on foregrounding connection for common survival. Our lives are enabled by complex assemblages and an interplay between forms of life (Tsing 2015, Lorimer 2015, Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). By rethinking and retooling knowledge infrastructures to emphasize linkages–connections, context and interdependence–a new way of relating to nature becomes possible.

Revealing Relations uses science and technology studies and feminist critique to ground why these changes are needed and to spur the reader towards creative possibilities. It will inspire those seeking to innovate approaches to the design and use of knowledge infrastructures, and help rethink interfaces, data collection and use of data for policy. This book contributes to a new basis for trust in data and knowledge, using digital means to connect and enhance common contexts for life.