employment
Virginia Tech – Department of Political Science, Associate Professor, 2017-present. Blacksburg, VA.
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, Research Institute for Sustainability – Fellow, 2023-2024, Germany.
University of South Florida – School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, Provost Postdoctoral Scholar in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 2016-2017
education
Ph.D. - Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 2016
M.Sc. - International Relations, with distinction (highest honors), London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK, 2005
A.B. - Biochemical Sciences, cum laude, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2002
publications
Books
Petromasculinité. Trans. Clément Amézieux. France: Éditions Wildproject, 2023.
The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics and the Politics of Work. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Sovacool, B., S. Bell, C. Daggett, J. Firestone, L. Naylor, M. Lennon, J. Klinger, C. Labuski, and K. Leonard. “Pluralizing Energy Justice: Incorporating Feminist, Anti-Racist, Indigenous, and Postcolonial Perspectives.” Energy Research & Social Science (March 2023).
“Energy and Domination: Contesting the Fossil Myth of Fuel Expansion,” Environmental Politics (August 2020).
“Toward Feminist Energy Systems: Why Adding Women and Solar Panels Isn’t Enough.” Energy Research & Social Sciences 68 (October 2020).
“Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47.1: 25-44 (2018).
“Drone Disorientations: How ‘Unmanned’ Weapons Queer the Experience of Killing in War.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17.3: 361-379 (2015).
Book Chapters
(forthcoming) “A Politics of Solar Abundance.” In Solarities: Inflections and Refractions. Eds. Jeff Diamanti, Cymene Howe, and Amelia Moore. Punctum Press.
“Thermodynamics.” In Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon, eds. Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian. Punctum Press, 2020.
“Earthborn: Maternity and Natality on a Hurting Planet,” in Troubling Motherhood: Maternity in Global Politics, eds. Laura Shepherd, Anna Weissman and Lucy Hall. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
“World-Viewing as World-Making: Feminist technoscience and the aesthetics of the Anthropocene.” In Worldviews in Science, Technology and Art in International Relations, eds. Madeline Carr, Renee Marlin-Bennett and Jatinder P. Singh. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Public Writing
“Designing Feminist Energy Systems: climate politics beyond ‘jobs’ and ‘babies.’ With Shannon E. Bell and Christine Labuski. Autonomy, September 28, 2022.
“Green-ing masculinity?” Autonomy, July 12, 2022.
“Petro-masculinity and the politics of climate refusal.” Autonomy, May 1, 2022.
“Why I Love Teaching Carbon Democracy,” article on Energy Humanities site, April 4, 2022.
“The Melodrama of Climate Change Denial,” interview in Green European Journal, March 11, 2020.
“Fight or switch? How the low-carbon transition is disrupting fossil fuel politics,” The Conversation, Nov 22, 2019.
“Entanglement can be Scary.” Invited blog post for Forum, Can World Politics Save Planet Earth?, 2017.
awards & grants
2023 - 2025 - Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, “Advancing Transformational Energy Justice across the Renewable Energy Supply Chain”
2023-2024 - Fellow, Research Institute for Sustainability, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, Germany
2022-2023 - Niles Research Grant, Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
2021 - Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award for “Toward Feminist Energy Systems,” co-authored with Shannon E. Bell and Christine Labuski, presented by the Environmental Sociology Section of the American Sociology Association
2021 - Albert Lee Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence in Research, presented by the Mu of Virginia Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at Virginia Tech
2021 - 2020-2021 Excellence in Research and Creative Scholarship Award from the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
2021 - Virginia Tech Pathways Grant for the development of an Environmental Justice minor, with Shannon E. Bell and Christine Labuski.
2020 - Yale H. Ferguson Book Award presented by the International Studies Association-Northeast, presented to “the book that most advances the vibrancy of international studies as a pluralist discipline”
2020 - Clay Morgan Award for the Best Book in Environmental Political Theory, awarded by the Environmental Political Theory Section of the Western Political Science Association
2020 - Virginia Tech Incentive Grant for feminist energy research, with Shannon E. Bell and Christine Labuski.
2019 - Virginia Tech Center for Humanities Research Associate.
2017 - A. Leroy Bennett Award, for the best paper presented at the 2016 ISA Northeast Regional Conference by a scholar who holds a PhD
2015 - Enloe Award, International Feminist Journal of Politics for “Drone Disorientations: How ‘Unmanned’ Weapons Queer the Experience of Killing in War.”
2015 - Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University
2009 - Paul McCoy Award for the Most Distinguished Graduate Political Science Paper, Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Science
Keynotes
2023 - “Renewable Masculinities.” La Machine dans le jardin, Mellionnec, France, August 18-20.
2022 - “Renewable Masculinities.” Petrocultures Annual Conference, Stavanger, Norway, August 25-27.
2022 - “Renewable Masculinities.” Energy and Climate Transformations: 3rd International Conference on Energy Research & Social Science, Manchester, UK, June 20-23.
2021 - “Desiring Energy: Toxic Fantasies of Fuel, Freedom, and Work.” Sentimental Extraction. University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Erlangen, Germany, September 29-October 1.
2021 - “Desiring Energy: How work-and-freedom fuel narratives block a just transition.” Global Climate Crisis: Seeking Environmental Justice and Climate Equality. University of Maryland, College Park, September 2.
2020 - “Energy: A Geo-Theology of Work.” Towards a new eco-social imagination: Narratives and transitions in the face of the crisis of civilization. MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain, March 5.
2019 - “Genre Trouble on a Warming Planet: Countering Far Right Melodrama.” Political Ecologies of the Far Right. Lund University, Lund, Sweden, November 15-17.
Invited Talks (selected)
2023 - “Pétroculture: A dialogue between Renaud Bécot and Cara New Daggett,” La Manufacture D’Idées, Mâcon, France, August 22-25.
2023 - “Misogyny and Energy.” Feminists on the Politics of Crisis Symposium. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, March 23-24.
2022 - “The Birth of Energy.” Territorial Design in Histories, Theories, and Projects. Swiss Institute of Technology - ETH Zurich, Department of Architecture. December 1.
2022 - “Fossil fuels and the new right.” Fossil Aesthetics. Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, November 16-17.
2022 - “Energy Otherwise.” Immaterial Ecologies. Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal, November 3-5.
2022 - “The Birth of Energy.” Critical Media Lab Colloquium. FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Switzerland, November 2.
2022 - “Desiring Energy: Toxic Fantasies of Fuel, Freedom, and Work.” Energy: Past and Present Seminar. Interuniversity Institute for Science Studies, University of Valencia, Spain, October 26.
2022 - “Petro-masculinity.” The Real Economy. Public conference hosted by Luxembourg Strategy, Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy, October 17-18.
2022 - “The Birth of Energy.” Graduate School of Design. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, September 8.
2022 - “Desiring Energy: Toxic Fantasies of Fuel, Freedom, and Work.” Mental Infrastructures of Modern Fossil and Bio-based Societies Workshop, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. University of Jena, Jena, Germany, May 19-20.
2022 - “Toward Feminist Energy Systems,” Energy, Gender, and Space Lecture Series for Energy Geographies Research Group (EnGRG), Royal Geographical Society, United Kingdom, May 13.
2022 - “Energy and Domination.” Times of Energy Justice: What can we change? Organized by the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy and the Department of Economics and Business, Central European University, Vienna, Austria, February 8.
2022 - “Petro-masculinity.” Political Science International Seminar, University of Lille, Lille, France, January 13.