Project Researcher
University of Oxford
Uttara Narayan is conducting research to understand the relationship between racial justice and energy demand in the UK. The objective of this research is to find ways to envision and achieve racial justice within the UK’s energy demand landscape by developing a research agenda that addressing existing research gaps and visions a just future. This research draws upon interdisciplinary traditions ranging from energy justice, human geography to sociological approaches to understand energy use and racialisation.
Previously, Uttara worked for the World Resources Institute in India on energy governance. Her work involved incorporating political economy and social justice perspectives in clean energy transition and electricity access interventions, as well as in developing strategies to incorporate equity at the programmatic level. This involved making decision-making instruments such as data and policy inclusive through the representation of multi-scalar and diverse stakeholder voices. She also worked towards building an empirical base to broaden India’s interpretation of a just transition that considered broader consequences of exclusion and injustice in the acceleration of renewable energy installations.
Uttara holds academic degrees in Development Studies from IIT-Madras, and Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. She pursued the latter with the help of the Chevening and Weidenfeld Hoffman Trust scholarships.
Banner photo credit: Val Vesa on Unsplash