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About us
"[G]eographical approaches to energy are best conceived as an academic borderland.
...the strength of energy geographers is their lack of ties to some common doctrine or particular mode of inquiry, which brings the flexibility required to contribute to multi-disciplinary research projects"
Kirby Calvert (2015)
What is the EnGRG?
The Energy Geographies Research Group (EnGRG) is a volunteer-led organisation that supports research and teaching on the spatial dimensions of energy issues. We are a research group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG).
We promote the study of energy's geographical dimensions, asserting the importance of geographical ideas and concepts for coming to terms with energy issues.
The EnGRG began life in 2011 as a Limited Life Working Group of the RGS-IBG. It received full research group status in March 2015.
It was originally formed in response to growing academic interest in the social 'challenges' connected to global energy issues. An early focus was on addressing weak conceptualizations of space and place that had characterized much of the existing energy policy and scholarship available at that time.
Since 2011, geographical research on energy issues has expanded to become a significant (yet broad) sub-field within Human Geography. However, this work is far from coherent in focus, meaning that there is no such thing as a singular 'energy geography'. Instead, this field consists of a diverse collective of researchers and texts that all share concerns for the ways in which space and energy affect one another. Indeed, given geographers' early emphasis on supplementing existing energy scholarship with geographical concerns, the notion of a distinct and bounded sub-discipline of 'energy geographies' is one that many geographers working on energy topics wish to distance themselves from.
As such, the group works to support this original goal: to show the relevance of a concerted attention to space when studying energy issues, and to facilitate the exploration of the importance of energy issues within geography; a discipline that is committed to understanding society-environment relations. We provide a platform for sharing ideas, promoting geographical energy research, and networking with students and professionals from across the academy and energy sector.
As part of the Royal Geographical Society, the EnGRG receives a small percentage of RGS annual membership fees, determined by the number of members that indicate their interest in the group on their membership form. If you are a member of the RGS and are interested in our activities, please consider updating your membership details. You can also sign up to become a member of the RGS here.
We adhere to the society's code of conduct and GDPR policies.
Please see our annual report for 2024.
We work to achieve this in four ways:
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