Collegio futuro winter school 2026, workshop I Energy transition: socio-spatial tensions
The transition to renewable energy reshapes landscapes and sparks new land-use conflicts. This workshop explores the social, spatial, and environmental dynamics of these changes through an interdisciplinary lens.
Renewable energies require far more land than fossil fuels, which is why tensions surrounding land use are increasingly being observed in connection with renewable energies such as wind and solar power. The group will take an interdisciplinary approach (political ecology/human geography and environmental geology/engineering geology) to examine socio-spatial processes, changes, risks, problems and perspectives relating to land and renewable energies. In particular we discuss case studies on infrastructure for electricity generation and green hydrogen production, and biomass cultivation for agrofuels and focus on land relations and use, contextual factors and geographical locations and ground conditions (including groundwater) for explain problems around project implementation and future perspectives of energy transitions. We give insights in research on risk assessment prior to project implementation and during operation phase and the social tensions related to renewables.
Supervision:
Jun. Prof. Rosa Lehmann, Heidelberg University
Asst. Prof. Anna Bąkowska, University of Warsaw
Rosa Lehmann studied Cultural Anthropology and Political Science at Freiburg University, where she received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2018. Since April 2021, she is HCIAS Junior Professor of “Innovation and Sustainability in Ibero-America” at the Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies (HCIAS) in conjunction with the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences/Department of Geography and the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). Prior to her position at the HCIAS, Rosa Lehmann was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the junior research group “Bioeconomy and Social Inequalities” at the University of Jena from 2016 to 2021, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Rosa Lehmann works across the fields of political ecology and energy studies, and studies socioenvironmental change, extractivism, contested energy transitions, the making of new energy spaces and struggles around just socioecological transformations in urban and rural contexts with a regional focus on Chile, Mexico, and Germany.
Anna Bąkowska holds a PhD in Earth Sciences and a Master’s degree in engineering Geology. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Geology and Geomechanics at the Faculty of Geology, University of Warsaw. For several years, she also worked in the Department of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources at the same university. Her research interests lie in the broad field of applied geology — from characterizing the natural environment for engineering purposes, through addressing engineering and environmental challenges arising from the interaction between geological conditions and human activity, to assessing natural hazards and their impact on engineering structures.
