New Earth Institute Strategic Priority Projects 2023/4
The Earth Institute is delighted to announce the two new strategic priority projects for 2023 supported by our Strategic Priority Support Mechanism (SPSM). The SPSM encourages interdisciplinary activity across the Earth Institute, UCD, and beyond, across environmental and sustainability research and related disciplines.
Earth Institute Director, Professor Eoin O’Neill said, “The Strategic Priority scheme is central to the Institute’s support of emerging research areas. This brings to sixteen the total number of projects funded since the scheme started in 2018. Soil and energy transitions are two critical research areas. The interdisciplinary and collaborative perspectives brought by these two project teams will help to understand and address many related environmental, sustainability and societal challenges. We are very excited about working with this year’s awardees and to see these projects develop”.
The successful projects for 2023 are:
Irish Energy Narratives in the Transition (IE-NARR)
Narratives provide invaluable ways of expressing the grassroots experiences of energy transitions from fossil fuel to renewable energy-systems, both in the past and today. Ireland is an exemplary site from which to examine the narrative mediation of such transitions, in literary texts, written reportage, to public discourse, and oral stories. The IE-NARR project will bring together scholars and communities interested in narrative and just transitions, to establish research strands, sources, and a network, to probe how energy shifts are being registered by focusing on three sites of energy transition and potential friction in rural and urban Ireland. The sites are Kilrush, Co. Clare (coal at Moneypoint to offshore wind), Carna, Co. Galway (fossil fuels to Sceirde Rocks offshore wind project), and West Dublin (fossil fuels and emergent renewable infrastructures tied to data centres). The team will organise workshops with varying formats at each of these sites to probe how extractive energy pasts, contemporary local action, and desired energy futures are being registered by communities and creative works at key moments of energy transformation.
Led by Treasa de Loughry (UCD School of English, Drama and Film) with Tomas Buitendijk (UCD School of Earth Sciences/Business) and Patrick Brodie (UCD School of Information and Communication Studies)
SoilSphere – Connecting UCD soil researchers
Soil is inherent to many of the global challenges we research, including food security, climate change, biodiversity collapse and sustainable cities. SoilSphere will formalise a network for soil researchers in UCD to collaborate and develop interdisciplinary research consortia. It will also facilitate knowledge and technique sharing and break down disciplinary boundaries. Crucially those new to UCD, including postdocs, Ad Astra and Early Career Researchers, will benefit from this scheme as they can fast track their research network through the events planned. SoilSphere legacy materials will be co-created with stakeholders at a soil and art wrap-up event, to ensure SoilSphere is the seed for a network with longevity.
Led by Saoirse Tracy (UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science) with Sharon O’Rourke (UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering) and Tancredi Caruso (UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science).
Our 2024/25 call will open early next year - if you’d like to discuss the call or a potential idea, talk to our research manager Caitriona Devery.
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