I am Full Professor of Social Studies of Energy within STS (Science & Technology Studies; Professorship in Danish: Energi og Samfund). For a vision of my research, see the video from my inaugural lecture.

Founded in the New Economic Sociology-infused STS strands of the Social Studies of Markets and Valuation Studies, I am building a research field around a critical sociology of the agencing and devicing of expertise and its role for construing 'good energy' and its role in producing valuation struggles.

With a PhD from Copenhagen Business School and the Sino-Danish Center for Research & Education, and previous positions at Stanford University and DTU Wind and Energy Systems, I am currently building up an STS research group around energy at the Section for Human-Centered Innovation (H-CI) within the Division of Technology and Business Studies at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics (DTU MAN), DTU (Technical University of Denmark).

I am currently leading two excellence projects:

Principal Investigator Good-By-Devicing (ERC, European Research Council Starting Grant) (2024-2028). ERC News from DTU
My Youtube-video
Principal Investigator of The Expertise of Expectations (Sapere Aude programme, Independent Research Fund Denmark) (2024-2028)

Examples of previous projects:

Principal Investigator of the Co-Green Project (Independent Research Fund Denmark) on the technification-politicization of wind turbine noise (2021-2024)
Sub-project Leader of EXPO-GREEN Project (Independent Research Fund Denmark, led by Professor Peter Karnøe, AAU) on the (de)legitimization of different energy sources as ‘sustainable’ over time, and the role of expertise in problematizing the value of energy resources (2021-2024)

I have previously been leading the STS-based research group in Science, Technology and Innovation in the Section for Society, Market & Policy (SMP) at the DTU department of Wind and Energy Systems.

At the Section for Human-Centered Innovation at DTU MAN, our STS research investigates one of the grand challenges of our time: climate change, and how to facilitate a 'just' energy transition in the decoupling from fossil fuels, to shed new light on the multi-faceted valuations of energy in a post-decarbonising society.

Major technological advances have been made in the field of renewable energy within the past decades, be it in onshore and offshore wind energy, solar energy, or sector integration through Power-to-X technologies and energy islands. Our research is centred around the key question of how to engage the public in the energy transition in a just way, and we explore how and whether this can be done through integration of heterogeneous valuations into the design tools that design the energy transition. In my two current excellence projects, we use the empirical cases of energy islands and power-to-x (PtX) technologies to explore this further.

The energy group in the H-CI section contributes through research of controversies over energy technologies and markets, and their underlying forms of expertise, exploring and intervening in how concerns and needs can be included of those that are living with, or are concerned about, new technologies, infrastructures, and energy futures.

We study this by adopting a socio-technical approach rooted in STS, probing for whom and what, and by whom and what, different forms of energy futures are construed as 'good' (e.g. 'sustainable'), and with what consequences. We are particularly interested in the role of networks of expertise, for instance inquiring into the role and devices of engineering and economic expertise in the drive towards optimization and cost-efficiency. Such techno-economic valuations include certain concerns and valuations – inscribed into design tools, scenarios, and more – while other more overarching valuations and concerns may get excluded.

We therefore explore and challenge how things are being done in the ‘laboratory’ of e.g. scientists, engineers, economists, planners, state agencies, and project developers – probing underlying valuations of efficiency, growth, and more, probing how things could be potentially otherwise. A key concept is here that of what I coin as 'devicing' and 're-devicing'.

Exploring the boundaries for an interventionist STS approach, we study innovation processes where the public and alternative forms of expertise take an active role in development and implementation of renewable energies. At the same time, we feed our findings back to practitioners (e.g., developers, municipalities) and decision-makers (e.g. policymakers, Danish Energy Agency) in civil society, government institutions and companies. We thus seek to aid the development of new ways of bringing together engineers, policymakers and citizens, project developers, investors, NGOs and local communities, to work jointly towards 'good energy economies'.

Our approach is explorative and in contrast to most STS-environments around the world that look at the ‘laboratories’ of different experts from the outside, we look at it from within. Aiming to push the boundaries for what types of concerns and valuations that can become included into critical design tools, we engage closely with engineers and economists in co-production workshops. We use qualitative data and cater for reflexive interventionist methods, basing our research on ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, observations), workshops, and diary studies to create a rich picture of the epistemological tensions and valuation struggles playing out between different disciplines, as well as between ‘experts’ and ‘lay people’ in the energy transition.

Julia Kirch Kirkegaard