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