Mikaela Vasstrøm

Mikaela Vasstrøm (b.1977), Associate Professor at the Department of global development and planning, UiA. She holds a PhD (2012) from Copenhagen University, the department of Food and Resource Economics. Her main research interest evolves around just energy transitions and particular challenges and opportunities related to energy democracy and governance, and implications for local and regional development. She has previously worked with public participation and co-creation in conflicts related to environmental planning. Since 2018 she has been the project leader of WINDPLAN funded by the Norwegian Research Council. WINDPLAN (https://windplan.uia.no/) explored onshore wind power development in Norway, Scotland, and Denmark, and analysed (lack of) social acceptance, emerging contestations of energy justice, and local government capability to handle energy planning and deployment. She is UiA partner in the Norwegian Research Council funded Research school: Empowered Futures (https://www.nmbu.no/en/research/projects/empoweredfutures) aimed at educating PhD scholars with research-based competence on energy controversies, equitable policy and development frameworks to achieve just energy transitions. She is co-lead on two work packages in the WINDREG project: WP3) Procedural justice in planning and governance of regional OW transitions and WP4) Co-production of knowledge for energy justice in regional OW transitions.