Congratulations!

Carmen Séra-Penker: 
The energy transition in Barbados: Energy dependency, power relations in the energy system and the role of island spatiality

In her dissertation, Carmen asks how energy dependency, power relations in the energy system and island spatiality shape the energy transition in Barbados. The results highlight to what extent island spatiality influences the possibilities for decarbonisation, while the energy transition objective itself is situated in an interstice trying to reach 100% renewable energy while continuing fossil fuel exploration and extraction. However, power relations also determine to what extent a transformation of the energy system is possible. Further findings show how passive revolution and trasformismo are used to maintain the fossil-fuel energy regime, and which potential alternatives to the dominant energy transition trajectory are developed locally.

Tamara Artacker:
Doing, Knowing and Being: Power in Peasant Integration into the Agro-industrial Dispositif in Ecuador

In her PhD research, Tamara examined power relations shaping peasant integration into agroindustrial production chains, focusing on hybrid maize expansion in Ecuador. Using an ethnographic approach and Foucauldian notions of power, she explored how epistemic power and modes of subjectivation shape rural transformations and land-use change. Her work highlights how agroindustrial strategies are contested and negotiated, producing heterogeneous outcomes, hybridized knowledges, and the coexistence of different ways of doing and knowing. The research calls for a power-sensitive approach to farmers’ decision-making and land-use change that takes epistemic and ontological questions seriously.

Warmest congratulations Carmen and Tamara, and every success for the future!