Abstracts are now being accepted for this proposed session at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2026, to be held in London and online, from 1st – 4th September 2026.
Session title: Energy justice and the longue durée of coloniality within energy systems
Session convenors: Anna Cain (UNSW Sydney), Helena Hastie (University of Exeter), Ryan Stock (Northern Michigan University) and Idalina Baptista (University of Oxford)
Session type: Papers Session, Hybrid, EnGRG sponsorship pending.
Achieving energy justice is often assumed possible through technological substitution attained by fast speed at vast scales. Undoubtedly, technologies are important. However, without critically engagement, lower-carbon energy systems can also entrench or exacerbate existing injustices. These concerns are sharply exposed in studies at the intersection between energy change and historical and contemporary experiences of colonisation. Powering colonial-capitalism has long been afforded through extractivism and exploitation. In post-colonial and carbon-conscious contexts, for example, lower-carbon energy has been used as a medium for dispossession and marginalisation (Rignall 2016; Stock 2023) while settler-colonial focused studies illustrate energy justice is often contingent on alignment with dominant social and economic structures (Chandrashekeran 2021; Cain 2024; Hoicka et al. 2021). Neocolonial power is also projected through contemporary systems of international development (Castán Broto et al. 2018; Munro et al. 2017) and global capitalism (Dunlap and Arce 2022), often predicated on universalist understandings of the world centred in Euro-American ways of being and knowing (Kumar 2022). Energy systems are also used to further authoritarian agendas predicated on patriarchal and ethnoreligious dominance. Such epistemological stances seemingly infiltrate even "non-colonial" contexts, for example, in sustaining energy ontologies that are presented as the norm but inhibit justice (Cain 2025; Damgaard et al. 2022). Energy justice, therefore, must reckon with the longue durée of coloniality within energy systems.
In this session, we invite papers from all disciplines that bring a (de/post/anti)colonial lens to energy justice studies to collectively and critically reflect on the colonial ways of knowing, producing and living with energy. Papers might examine, but are not limited to, the following themes and topics:
- Land and place, particularly concerning local and Indigenous peoples and their relationship with land;
- Policy, governance and decision-making which enacts or inhibits justice;
- Ontologies and/or epistemologies of energy and energy justice;
- Alternative, justice-centred energy futures;
- Innovative or praxis-oriented methods to study energy in ways that empower marginalized groups.
In these sessions, we imagine having a generative mix of empirical and conceptual studies, and welcome work at any stage of finalization (e.g. prototypical or published), inclusive of creative works. We invite scholars and practitioners from all from all disciplines, career stages, institutional affiliations and geographies. We welcome collaborative presentations (e.g. co-presentation with community co-researchers or similar) in the session. We anticipate this session will be held in hybrid format to minimise the financial and environmental burdens of participating in this international scholarly forum, in line with the themes of this session and the conference. We will support applications for research group guest (complimentary) registration for eligible (co)authors without institutional funding support.
The hope is that enough empirically defensible and theoretically robust papers are featured in these sessions, such that we can curate a collective scholarly output or something else entirely.
If you are interested in presenting your research in these sessions, please send a short abstract (up to 300 words) to Anna Cain (anna.cain@unsw.edu.au) on behalf of the session organisers by Friday February 20th, 2026 that articulates your paper’s generative contributions to or novel departures from the aforementioned themes. We will notify you of your acceptance into these sessions by Monday March 2nd, 2026.