We are excited to welcome Professor of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, to DTU Management at the Human-Centred Innovation section.
Julia's research concerns the position of technology in society, and in particular the relationship between energy technologies and one of the biggest societal challenges we face today: combatting climate change. In particular, she investigates society’s struggles with the phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy.
Julia’s research has also led her to expand her network both internationally with a postdoc position abroad at Stanford University, California, and here in Denmark, with a short employment at Aalborg University in Copenhagen.
Since then, Julia has been the principal investigator on the project “Co-Green”, funded by The Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF), which uses wind turbine noise as a case to shed new light on controversies in the energy transition. Having worked closely with engineers in an interdisciplinary manner at DTU Wind for many years, her work often takes as its research object the very knowledge and valuations of different types of expertise – be it scientists, developers, bureaucrats, municipal planners, and local communities, etc. – many of which tend to collide in the energy transition.
In 2023, Julia received two large excellence grants: An ERC Starting Grant with her project “Good-by-Devicing - Probing how value comes to matter in the energy transition”, using the concept of energy islands as the empirical case, and a Sapere Aude Grant from DFF on “The expertise of expectations – the case of power-to-x”. These two projects will build new knowledge on valuation struggles and how they shape our engagements with energy. With these excellence projects, Julia is excited to bring together a team at DTU Management where she can explore her field of research, in collaboration with other leading STS scholars.
"At DTU Management, I look forward to building a group around my new projects that look at renewable energy, which hopefully can grow and blossom into other projects. It’s time that we start understanding why it is so difficult to make the energy transition work."
Head of the Human-Centered Innovation division, Brit Ross Winthereik, welcomes Julia at DTU Management, "I am happy and pleased that a strong STS profile like Julia chooses to consolidate her research career here at the department. Not only is she dedicated, skilled, and experienced, but her research also brings together some of the interests we already have in the Human-Centred Innovation section such as public engagement in technology projects, social science perspectives on renewable energy, and digital methods for mapping controversies”.
We want to give a huge welcome to Julia Kirch Kirkegaard at DTU Management!
