Photo of Fredrik Envall

Fredrik Envall

Associate Professor

As an environmental social scientist, I am interested in how environmental issues are made intelligible and acted upon in society. My research is interdisciplinary and situated in the intersection of environment, politics, and technology.

The places, ideas, technologies, and processes of environmental politics

Different ways of handling environmental issues are intertwined with different understandings of them. From this starting point I explore societal processes emerging as green ambitions are put into practice across different places, often channeled through different technologies, as well as the ideas and knowledge that underpin such political programs. Special focus is dedicated to political dimensions such as power, values, and controversies.

As a researcher I am undisciplined, and inspired by different social science perspectives on environmental issues, politics, and technology. I often take critical approaches as point of departure, such as political ecology, socio-technical infrastructure studies, and discourse analysis. A socio-technical perspective on infrastructures, such as energy systems, highlights how these mediate environmental governance and power relations as well as environmental impact in a material, spatial, and social sense.

Energy constitutes a red thread in my research. In my dissertation I studied how experimentation on so-called smart grids arrange environmental governance in broad terms, beyond isolated pilot projects. The study included moving across different places where governance is “done” or accomplished in practice, such as governmental agencies, policy networks, interest organizations, the locations of different experiments, and local public administrations.

In the project “Local solar energy communities – a way towards strengthened energy democracy?” I explore local solar energy community initiatives. The project combines in-depth case studies of local solar energy communities with analysis of the policy landscape they are embedded within,

Publications

2024

Fredrik Envall, Daniel Andersson (2024) Vägar till rättvis omställning: energigemenskaper i skärningspunkten mellan systemoptimering och demokratiskt deltagande
Fredrik Envall, Harald Rohracher (2024) Technopolitics of future-making: The ambiguous role of energy communities in shaping energy system change Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Vol. 7, p. 765-787 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2023

Fredrik Envall, Daniel Andersson, Harald Rohracher (2023) Att energigemenskapa: Energigemenskaper som arena för klimatomställningens praktiker och politik Sociologisk forskning, Vol. 60, p. 299-325 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Fredrik Envall (2023) Situated dynamics of environmental governance in Swedish smart energy experimentation: Tentativeness, demonstration, upscaling Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Vol. 41, p. 922-940 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Fredrik Envall, Daniel Andersson, Josefin Wangel (2023) Gridlocked: Sociomaterial configurations of sustainable energy transitions in Swedish solar energy communities Energy Research & Social Science, Vol. 102, Article 103200 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

Research project & networks

CV

CV in short

  • 2021
    PhD in Technology and social change
  • 2015
    PhD student in Technology and Social Change, and the Energy Systems research school, Linköping University 
  • 2015
    Master’s degree (M. Sc) in political science, Linköping University 
  • 2012
    Bachelor’s degree (B. Sc) in environmental science, Linköping University 

Teaching

  • I teach environmental science, urban and regional planning, and political science, mainly focusing on social processes related to environmental issues.

 

Organisation