A brief account of the CLUES: Energy in the Locality conference which took place at UCL on Tuesday 8 May 2012. LoLo student Mike Fell was there.
I’ve attended many conferences over recent years, and have consistently found this sort of small-to-medium-sized gathering to be the best. I’d estimate that there were around 70 attendees – enough to make the spaces look respectably full and to provide a good range of viewpoints on any given question, but small enough that it’s possible to follow up with speakers after their presentations. I’d recommend looking out for gems like this happening near you.
The conference dealt with case study research in the energy field. Case studies come in for a lot a criticism, mainly because they are viewed as difficult or impossible to generalize from and therefore best suited to pilot studies before the “real” research gets started. Patrick Devine-Wright gave an excellent introduction to the subject showing how by choosing cases carefully and by selecting suitable comparators between them, it’s possible to really leverage their findings and make a convincing argument for policy relevance.
Among the other talks, I was particularly interested by those covering:
- Innovation histories by Sabine Hielscher, which are a great way of getting the researcher’s and case study participants’ reflections into research reporting
- Smart Communities by Kevin Burchell, giving communities better feedback on their energy use and involving a local primary school (project website www.smartcommunities.org.uk)
- …and of course heating in the Barbican Centre by LoLo’s own Carrie Behar!
There was a lot to take in from the methodological point of view, something I’m thinking about a good deal at the moment as I work up a PhD proposal. Food for thought!
Follow Carrie Behar on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/LoLoStudent!!
