EE2026: Infrastructures of Energy | 4-6 Aug 2026 | St Andrews & Online
Call For Paper Abstracts
 


In 2016, we organised the conference “Energy Ethics 2016”, which was held in St Andrews and brought together scholars across humanities and social sciences. The conference invited contributors to consider the ethical underpinnings, dilemmas, and questions that arise in energy systems and practices. The resulting Special Issues highlighted the capacious ways that consumers, producers, and critics made ethical judgements about these energy systems and practices. The publications also encouraged scholars to be conscious of how their own moral imaginations shaped their research practices. 

Much has changed since 2016. Energy transitions have become commonplace and intensely debated, spurred by the climate crisis, national policymaking, and massive public and private investment. There is a growing critical engagement with renewables, due to their continued reliance on resources, capitalist circuits of investment, and links to mining via the critical minerals they require. The political positionings of anthropologists have also become stronger, perhaps related to heightening political polarisation, the vulnerabilities laid bare by Covid-19, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the enrolment of social scientists into large energy infrastructure projects, popularist politics, and much more. Recognising infrastructures of energy’s extensive and multi-dimensional entanglements in contemporary life, it is ever-more urgent that we reflect on our interlocutors’ and our own ethical imaginations and politics of energy. 

For EE2026, we welcome abstracts that address topics related to infrastructures of energy, such as: public planning and taxation; governmentality and responsibilisation; prediction and forecasting; expertise, scientism and epistemes of facts; commons and collectives; risks and insurance; moral epistemology and climate ethics; affect and qualia; trust and mistrust; security and securities; war and conflict; crisis, hope and despair; debt and liabilities; fuel poverty and structural inequalities; justice; contracts; corporate techniques of accountability; humans and nonhumans; environment, social, and governance (ESG); co-benefits and biodiversity; work; digitalisation; materiality; artificial intelligence and automation; assets and assetisation; financialisation and quantification; and growth and degrowth.
 

Papers

Deadline for Paper Abstracts: 15 December 2025 

We have already issued a list of open panels that may still be recruiting participants, and we encourage authors to check there first. We will also put together ad hoc panels of individually submitted papers. We therefore invite paper abstracts to be presented at EE2026: Infrastructures of Energy. The papers should actively engage with one or more of the conference themes outlined above. Presenters will be limited to 20 mins with time for a Q&A session afterwards.  

Virtual Sessions 

We are committed to making EE2026 as inclusive and widely accessible as possible. As such, we encourage virtual participation. Virtual papers will be hosted via our bespoke conference app, which will help the integration of in-person and online participation. 

How to Submit Paper Abstracts 

All paper abstracts should be emailed to [email protected] no later than 15 December 2025 at 23.59 (UK time). 

Prospective presenters will be notified if their paper abstracts have been accepted from 1 February 2026. 

Submissions should contain: 

  • Paper Title 
  • Name & email address of speaker 
  • An indication of whether you intend to attend in-person or online 
  • 3 keywords associated with your presentation 
  • Paper abstract (max 300 words) 
  • Submissions should be in .docx (Word compatible) format if possible. 


If you have any questions about the submission process, please email us at [email protected]