Shayan Shokrgozar

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Geo: Geography and Environment by Shayan Shokrgozar & Siddharth Sareen (2025) entitled: '"Fine, you made your energy, but how much did we have to pay for this?": Embracing situated energy ecologies for pluriveral futures' with an orange banner at the top. Growing energy and material throughput, climate change targets and political economic evolution have spurred rapid deployment of lower-carbon energy infrastructures. Many of these developments have relied on ‘cheap nature’, often covering agropastoral and indigenous lands, which raises questions about the implications of energy transitions for non-industrial lifeways. This article explores the onto-epistemological foundations that comprise the emergent energy transitions paradigm. Anchored in ethnographic findings from fieldwork in Rajasthan (India), we identify naturalism as the dominant ontological basis of knowledge production in global energy policies and examine its imaginaries and practices. We draw on Philippe Descola's ontological modes of identification to question universalism and demonstrate its perpetuation through energy transition practices. These approaches overlook socioecological complexity, a gap starkly showcased by the solar energy rollout in agropastoral Rajasthan, with Jaisalmer district as its epicentre. To overcome these limitations, we propose and empirically test the Situated Energy Ecologies principles, which combine (a) a post-productivist approach based on a commitment to energy sufficiency; (b) a commitment to ontological and epistemic recognition, to better capture place-based ways of knowing and being; and (c) autonomous practices based on prefigurative politics and agonism. By integrating a wider array of human experiences, this tripartite heuristic fosters a pluralistic understanding of energy-society relations towards emancipatory engagement.

🔆New in Geo!🔆

'"Fine, you made your energy, but how much did we have to pay for this?" Embracing situated energy ecologies for pluriversal futures' by @shayanshokrgozar.bsky.social & @sidsareen.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1002/geo2... #geosky #geo

A big thank you to all the contributors and collaborators who made this possible.

You can explore all the 20 articles here:
link.springer.com/collections/...

The dawn of solar photovoltaics: emergent political economies at the solar–agri–land nexus - Sustainability Science Solar power is the most rapidly growing energy source worldwide. Solar turn holds potential for a significant shift to renewable energy and swift reductions in carbon emissions. Yet, as a land- and re...

I'm happy to share that our Special Issue is now complete, and our editorial introduction has just been published in Sustainability Science!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

@sidsareen.bsky.social @uibcet.bsky.social @empoweredfutures.bsky.social @fridtjofnanseninst.bsky.social

I’m grateful to the many interlocutors in India who shared their time and insight with us, and to friends and colleagues who read and commented on drafts along the way.

Drawing on political ecology, energy geographies, and agrarian studies, Siddharth Sareen and I examine how solar energy rollout in rural Rajasthan is foreclosing agrarian lifeworlds in favor of industrial ones—manifesting, we suggest, as a form of colonial modernity.

“Mitti se Sona [Gold from Dirt]?”: Solar India and colonial modernity in Agropastoral Rajasthan Reflecting the prioritization of techno “fixes” over the socio-political dimension leading to anthropogenic climate change, there is a global surge of…

Our article on Solar India is out!

@sidsareen.bsky.social @uibcet.bsky.social @empoweredfutures.bsky.social

3/ A special thanks to my co-conveners for the Dawn of Solar PV special issue workshop at the university of Stavanger--@sidsareen.bsky.social, Steven Wolf, and James McCarthy--and all the workshop participants for their valuable inputs.

2/ The article is inspired by a few years of conversations with friends, colleagues, co-authors, and many generous interlocutors in India along the way.

“This will destroy Jeev and Jantu”: infrastructures of modernity across water, energy, and land in Jaisalmer, India - Sustainability Science In the context of contemporary socioecological crises brought about through the political ontology of colonial capitalism, concerns about planetary conditions and their mounting pervasive impacts cont...

1/ It’s nice to see this paper, co-authored with Ashish Naik and @iamsubina.bsky.social, make its way out into the world!

doi.org/10.1007/s116...

@uibcet.bsky.social

Call for Participation: PhD Masterclass with 2025 Holberg Laureate Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak The Holberg Prize is offering scholarships for five PhD candidates in the Nordic countries to participate in a Masterclass with Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the topic “The Practice of…

As part of the celebration of the 2025 Holberg Prize Laureate Prof. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, on 4 June in Bergen we are hosting a PhD Masterclass, i.e. anyone currently a PhD student in the Nordic countries, regardless of citizenship: holbergprize.org/news/call-fo... @holbergprize.bsky.social

Akademisk mobilitet er ikke like tilgjengelig for alle 🌍 her er essayet mitt, skrevet sammen med min kollega @iamsubina.bsky.social

Devil in details as power sector goes from planning to execution | Jaipur News - Times of India Power companies bore much of the brunt of populist measures before the elections to the state assembly towards the end of 2023.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/...

2/ In the article, Nikki Theeuwes, Veronica Ahonen, and I explore the complexities of academic travel and carbon emissions.

Using cases from Norway and the Netherlands, we show that shifting to lower-carbon travel isn't just about making different choices—it's a political process.

Academic travel from above and below: Institutions, ideas, and interests shaping contemporary practices Following climate goals, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a growing number of European universities are changing their policies to…

1/ 🌍✈️ New paper out!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

3/ We argue that these narratives help legitimize top-down policymaking, emphasize quantitative targets over qualitative outcomes, and favor utility-scale solar plants over more localized forms of deployment

doi.org/10.1177/2514...

In the article, we dive into the dominant political narratives shaping Solar India—"solar nationalism" and "win-win techno-solutionism"⚡️🌍

#EnergyTransitions #SolarIndia @uibcet.bsky.social

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Nice to see our new article, co-authored with @bereniceg.bsky.social and @sidsareen.bsky.social, now out in @natureandspace.bsky.social 🌞

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Stipendiatstilling i prosjektet ECOBUDGETS (272030) | Universitetet i Bergen Stillingstittel: Stipendiatstilling i prosjektet ECOBUDGETS (272030), Arbeidsgivar: Universitetet i Bergen, Søknadsfrist: fredag 24. januar 2025

PhD position available at @uibcet.bsky.social - in our project ECOBUDGETS: Actionable budgets for sustainable climate and nature governance, financed by the NFR. Have a strong social science background, Norwegian/English language skills, eco-interest? Apply! www.jobbnorge.no/nn-no/ledige...

Congrats to Tvergastein Journal on releasing issue #18 🎉 Thanks for sending us a copy @uibcet.bsky.social! Keep up the awesome work 👏

Congratulations, @sidsareen.bsky.social 🥂

Opinion | The World Has Caught Up to Frantz Fanon The shock of the new, in political life, often sends us back to the past, in search of an intellectual compass.

www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/o...