Andreas Vavvos

PhD Candidate, Department of Social Anthropology

Biography

Andreas Vavvos is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology,

University of Saint Andrews, and the Department of Psychology, University of Crete.

Andreas’ project investigates how the critical realist notion of explanatory critique

might be broadened through the use of collaborative methodologies like

collaborative ethnography. More specifically, Andreas attempts to place explanation

at the core of the social sciences in contrast to interpretation or thick description.

He also looks at how academia can become more socially relevant by co-producing

knowledge with social movements. Andreas conducts extensive anthropological

fieldwork in Greece. With the primary objective of causally explaining the

phenomenon of opposition to the energy transition in Greece and critiquing other

explanations of this phenomenon, he is collaborating with the following collectives:

the hydrocarbon movement in Greece, an energy community in Crete, an informal

energy collective in Crete, and a coal miner who served as the former head of a

labor union in Western Macedonia. Through this collaborative work with various

collectives that concentrate on a multiplicity of causes for their resistance to the

energy transition, such as land grabbing and corruption, the obliteration of history,

misinformation, and multi-species justice, Andreas attempts to develop a

conceptual framework to explain why things are progressing in the manner they

have in Greece with regard to renewable energy and the phase-out of lignite.

Selected publications