Current Postgraduate Students
Miss Anne Maassen, BA, MSc
Biography
2007 - 2011: PhD, Durham University.
2006 - 2007: MSc Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Management, King’s College London.
2002 - 2006: BA Economics, Politics and International Studies, The University of Warwick University.
PhD title: ‘Solar Cities in Europe’
I’m a final year doctoral researcher, conducting a comparative study of the use of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in three European cities: Barcelona, London and Paris.
PV technology enables the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. Despite fast-paced innovations in the solar industry the urban application of PV in European cities has been relatively slow and uneven. The research investigates evidence of PV being used in three European cities (Barcelona, London and Paris), with respect to the main protagonists, and their motivations for promoting, financing, installing and using the technology.
The research is situated at the intersection of studies on urban governance, innovation, and urban technology. In bringing these diverse disciplinary approaches together I develop a framework for understanding urban PV that challenges so-called ‘techno-economic’ accounts, largely dominant in policy and to some extent academic circles, which explain technological ‘diffusion’ as occurring through market-mediated and policy and consumer-led processes. Instead, I investigate the case studies from a perspective that considers the gradual use of urban PV as part of wider developments which are specific to the urban contexts at hand, and can be framed as broader processes of ‘urban transitions’ - the restructuring of cities diagnosed by literatures on urban governance, processes of socio-technical change investigated by innovation studies and the intimate, inextricable entanglement of cities and technology, as framed by urban technology studies.
Grants
- Sanyo legacy fund (studentship)
http://uk.sanyo.com/About-SANYO/Corporate-social-responsibility/ - Manfred Heindler Grant at the Institute of Advanced Study on Science, Technology and Society (fellowship grant October 2009 - March 2010)
http://www.ifz.tugraz.at/index_en.php/article/articleview/1802/1/68
Peer-reviewed publications
Journal papers
Maassen A. (forthcoming 2011) Heterogeneity of lock-in and the role of strategic technological interventions in urban infrastructural transformation. European Planning Studies, Taylor&Francis.
Bulkeley H., Castan Broto V. and Maassen A. (forthcoming) “Urban energy systems and the governing of climate change” (revision stage) Urban Studies, Wiley-Blackwell.
Maassen A. (2010) “Planning urban energy trajectories: London and Barcelona” Proceedings of ICE: Urban Design and Planning, Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 163, Issue 4, Pages 185-192, Institution of Civil Engineers, Thomas Telford.
Maassen A. (2009) Social science perspectives on energy and the case of urban PV, Proceedings of ICE: Energy, Volume 162, Issue 4, pages 161 - 167, Institution of Civil Engineers, Thomas Telford.
Book Chapters
Maassen A. (forthcoming 2011) Photovoltaics on existing buildings in Barcelona and Paris: emerging forms of socio-technical organisation in urban energy provision. In Getzinger et al. (eds.) Yearbook 2010 of the Institute for Advanced Study on Science, Technology and Society. Vienna: Profil.
Bulkeley, H., Castán Broto, V. and Maassen, A. (2010) Governing urban low carbon transitions. In Bulkeley, H., Marvin, S., Hodson, M., Castán Broto, V. (Eds.) Cities and Low Carbon Transitions, London, NY: Routledge.
Maassen A. (2010) Social science perspectives on the Transition in the Energy system: dynamics, instruments and the case of photovoltaic. In Rodi, M. (ed.) The Paradigm Shift towards Energy Sus-tainability - Climate Change, Innovation and the Optimal Instrument Mix, Lexxion Verlag Publishers, Berlin.
Other
Contributor to the The SAGE Reference Series on Green Society (2010): Toward a Sustainable Future (Series Editor: Paul Robbins). ISBN 9781412996822:
Green Cities: an A-Z Guide : ‘London’
Green Cities: an A-Z Guide : ‘Barcelona’