This project was funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship held by me, Hannah Knox, from Oct 2017 – Oct 2018.

The aim of the project has been to explore how the analytic tools of political and digital anthropology might shed light on the complex social implications of global climate change. This builds on longer term research that I have been doing which has been looking ethnographically at how scientific knowledge about climate change is affecting the planning and governance of cities. The  British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship has enabled an extension of this research into an analysis of how new forms of environmental and energy data are remaking political ‘publics’.

Some of the resources to come out of this project are:

• A blog post on the Corsham Institute Data Observatory website about the anthropology of data.
• A blog post on the EPIC website on evidence and climate change.
• A co-produced pamphlet for policy-makers outlining a prospectus for energy futures.
• “It was ours anyway“. An energy walk exploring the history of electricity and its social organisation in Manchester.
• A comment piece in the journal Social Analysis on the challenges climate change poses to analysis.
• A public and accessible mini data-ethnography exploring what we can learn from an anthropological engagement with data and its social lives (forthcoming).