Helios 2: Anne Pasek on Changing Methods in a Changing Climate

12 Min Read

July 13, 2021

Helios is an EH interview series about new research in the energy humanities and the creative processes that bring it to life.

Our second installment features Anne Pasek, Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and the Environment at Trent University in Peterborough, ON. Anne’s wide-ranging research interests include the cultural politics of climate change, environmental communication, and rethinking academic research norms in a warming world. In addition to multiple book projects, she is currently founding the Trent Low-Carbon Research Lab.

EH editor Caleb Wellum sat down with Anne over Zoom on June 10 to talk about the methodological concerns, approaches, and experiments that inform her work. During the hourlong interview, they discussed critical making, the materiality of digital tech, and the importance of critical empathy in divided times.

Click the download link below to read the full interview.

Download the interview
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Read More

August 28, 2025

Harry Pitt Scott

Harry Pitt Scott examines the growing prominence of “electrify everything” as the guiding narrative of the energy transition. He traces how the International Energy Agency and advocates like Saul Griffith frame electrification as both necessary and sufficient, even as clean power lags behind demand. For Scott, the appeal of this vision lies in its promise of continuity, one that sees electricity as a clean replacement that leaves political and social arrangements unchanged.

Read
November 19, 2024

Tanner Mirrlees

Imre Szeman's new book, "Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life," explores how dominant powers—from "meta-entrepreneurs" like Elon Musk and Bill Gates to nationalist governments and petro-populists—compete to define a "common sense" of renewable futures that preserves the very systems driving the climate crisis. In this unorthodox review of the book, communications scholar and theorist Tanner Mirrlees introduces the text through a series of thematically connected concepts and questions that chart his response to the book and offer entry points for prospective readers. Mirrlees presents "Futures of the Sun" as a text that it will be important and useful to think with in a perplexing moment of flux and uncertainty in global climate politics.

Read
all articles