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In the 1960s, successive British government reports framed universities as central to the training of a skilled labour force. This resulted in increasingly close ties between universities and industry. In the 1990s, after deindustrialisation, the rhetoric about the necessity to create a skills-based economy became pervasive. However, the envisaged role for universities extended beyond training workers. Their academics were to have a marked impact on regional economies through their scholarship. In short, universities were expected to be wet nurses for their regions’ economies.
Given this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that the efforts by the Low Carbon Economy team, established by Durham County Council, to plan post-carbon futures required the University of Durham to play an important role. As the team had to create knowledge about its environs, they sought the aid of the university’s researchers.
In this presentation, Chima focuses on one case study to reveal the reasons that this act of attempting to co-create knowledge through research may result in problems. Specifically, he offers an account of a joint university-council project in which he and members of the Low Carbon Economy team were involved. The study was inspired by reports that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic’s enforced lockdown had resulted in a reduction in carbon generation. It was designed to create knowledge that confirmed whether there were potential benefits for decarbonisation to working from home, while also offering insight into the methods by which universities and councils might effectively co-operate with one another in the creation of new information.
In this account, Chima begins by discussing the role of office culture and meetings. He then examines how differences in institutional organization, the reliance on outside funding which left the council’s open to the funder’s agendas, and the difficulties in effectively gathering data for the project revealed the nature of not just the knowledge base that the Low Carbon Economy team had to draw upon to decide which post-carbon futures to create, but also the framework intended to create that knowledge.
Comments
The presentation will be followed by comments from a Norwegian perspective, by:
- Hege Westskog, Include’s Programme Coordinator, and leader of Include’s work on municipalities as change agents
- Jim Greatorex, coordinator for research and international activities in the Environmental Division of the City of Oslo's Agency for Urban Environment
⇒ Moderator: Tanja Winther
Presenter biography
Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes is a post-doctoral research associate affiliated with the Durham Energy Institute. He is a cultural anthropologist with an interest in the social aspects of energy transitions and decarbonisation. Chima joined Durham University in 2020 to work on an INCLUDE funded study exploring British local government efforts to plan for inclusive post-carbon futures. Concurrently he also worked on a National Centre for Energy Systems Integration funded project on the role of energy modelling in local government. Since 2022 Chima has researched Durham’s post-coalonial communities as part of the Geothermal Energy from Mines and Solar Geothermal Heat project.
Chima obtained his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine (2017). Prior to coming to Durham, he was a researcher at the Warwick Business School (2018) and the Sheffield University Management School (2018-2020).
See Chima's profile page at Durham University for more on his research interests and publications.