Social Sciences Newsblog

Tag: off-the-grid

Graduate Student Prehoda In the News

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image144321-persABC-10 News aired a story, about the potential for using solar energy in the UP, quoting Michigan Tech graduate student Emily Prehoda.

She is working on a survey that will be conducted in L’Anse next fall, a collaborative effort of the Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region, the Village of L’Anse, WPPI Energy, and Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center and Department of Social Sciences.

Residents of the village buy their power from WPPI Energy, a non-profit company.

Prehoda was also featured in USA Today (“The US could prevent a lot of deaths by switching from coal to solar“), and on NBC and CBS with researcher Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE).

Also in print, Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and social sciences PhD Student Emily Prehoda coauthored, potential lives saved by replacing coal with solar photovoltaic electricity production in the U.S., in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews that can be read here.

 

 

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Schelly delivers Green Lecture on Technology

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Asst. Prof. Chelsea Schelly presented a lecture last night in the 2013 Green Lecture Series on, “Technology, Nature & Society: Seeing the Social in the Material of Everyday Life.”

Read coverage of the event from the Daily Mininnig Gazette.

About the Lecture:

The technologies that we use in our everyday life – from electricity and transportation technologies, to cell phones and computers, to foods – impact the environment and the ways we relate to one another and to our communities. These technologies also shape the social and political organization of our society. We learn what “normal” life is, through our interactions with the materials that make life possible and comfortable. However, our use of those materials is shaped, and often limited, by factors outside our control, such as the policies that influence their use. In this talk, I will present some of the reasons people adopt alternative technologies (related to broad lifestyle choices and the policies that influence our choices) and some of the potential implications of these alternative technologies for how we meet our material needs and comforts. By recognizing that these technologies have social implications, we can begin to question how to best use these technologies to promote sustainable communities.

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