Research Areas

Climate and energy politics

Sustainable transitions (electric mobility, just transition)

Science-Policy Nexus

Anthropology of resources (unconventional hydrocarbon projects)

Aleksandra Lis-Plesińska, Associate Professor at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. From November 1^st 2021 until March 1^st 2022 she is looking at the visions and socio-technical imaginaries of sustainable transportation in the Bay Area as a Fulbright Senior Fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the UC Berkeley.

She holds a PhD degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest (Hungary). For the last ten years, she has closely studied the intersection between the European and Poland’s climate and energy politics, which resulted and the publication of a book with Routledge, titled Climate and Energy Politics in Poland: Debating Carbon Dioxide and Shale Gas (2020). Her research specifically focuses on the science-policy nexus, participation of non-experts publics in technological controversies and challenges of the just transition to low carbon energy and transportation systems.

She has led the Adam Mickiewicz team in several research projects funded by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 program, studying public perceptions of hydraulic fracturing technologies and non-experts’ engagement in the planning and monitoring of unconventional hydrocarbon projects (M4ShaleGas, SECURe).

Currently, she is focusing on the challenges of energy justice in the transition to low-carbon energy and transportation systems, studying post-mining communities and electric mobility transition at urban scale (ITEM). Her most recent publication in the journal Energy Research & Social Science examines niche and regime level projects in electric mobility in Poland, trying to understand how this transition may unfold in less advanced economies.

In the past, she worked as a research fellow at various research institutions and think tanks: Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the UC Berkeley (2018), Center on Organizational Innovation at the Columbia University in NYC (2010), Institute for Advanced aStudies in Science Technology and Society at TU Graz (2014), Agora Energiewende in Berlin (2014) and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Society in Cologne (2015).

Her most important publications include:

Lis, A. 2018. “Co-production of shale gas publics in Poland and the negotiation of the state citizens relations” The Extractive Industries and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.07.005

Lis, A. 2018. “Co-production of shale gas publics in Poland and the negotiation of the state citizens relations.” The Extractive Industries and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.07.005

Lis, A., Stasik, A. 2018. “Unlikely allies against fracking networks of resistance against shale gas development in Poland”, w: Whitton, J., Cotton, M.; Charnley-Parry, I. M., Brasier, K.: Governing Shale Gas Development, Citizen Participation and Decision Making in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, Londyn: Routledge Studies in Energy Policy, str. 117-130.

Lis, A. 2018. "Politics and Knowledge Production: Between Securitization and Riskification of the Shale Gas Issue in Poland and Germany", w: Szulecki, Kacper (red.) Energy Security in Europe: Divergent Perceptions and Policy Challenges. palgrave macmillan: Energy, Climate and the Environment, str. 93-116.

Lis, A.; Kama, K.; Reins, L. 2019. “Co-production European knowledge and publics amidst controversy: The EU expert network on unconventional hydrocarbons.” Science and Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.07.005

Lis. A. 2020. “Energopolitics in the times of climate change: productive and unproductive politics of energy infrastructures in Poland.” In: Tristan LOLOUM, Simone ABRAM and Nathalie ORTAR (eds), EnergoPolitics. Citizenship, Governmentality and Violence along the Grid, Berhghan – EASA book series.

Sareen, S., Thomson, H., Herrero, S. T., Gouveia, J. P., Lippert, P. Lis, A. (2020) “European energy poverty metrics: Scales, prospects and limits” Global Transitions 2(2020): 26-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glt.2020.01.003