Overview
Huei-Ling (Lynn) works on a multi-method research project titled 'Net Zero Sense of Place' in 3 UK industrial clusters (Scotland, Sourth Wales, and North West), which is part of the research program of the Industrial Decarbonization Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) funded by UKRI. She received her PhD in political ecology from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands in February 2021. Her PhD research investigated place-making politics and grassroots innovations in the energy and agricultural sectors in Taiwan, covering issues of indigenous rights, environmental justice, and resource grabbing that emerged in the studied cases. Before joining the University of Exeter, she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences under Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. She also translates environmental news and conducts independent reports on international environmental and energy issues for several online media and blogs in Taiwan.
Broad Research Specialisms
Political ecology, environmental activism and justice, grassroots innovation for sustainability, and human geography
Qualifications
BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures and minor in Economics (National Taiwan University)
MA in Victorian Literature (University of Leeds)
MSc in Environment, Science and Society (UCL)
PhD in Political Ecology (ISS, Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Research
Research interests
Political ecology, grassroots innovations, place-making, and environmental justice
Research projects
IDRIC-Net zero senses of place
IDRIC IA-Delivering a place-based just transition in industrial clusters
Research networks
Future Earth Taipei
Research grants
- 2023 Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre
IDRIC Impact Acceleration Funding
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Publications by category
Journal articles
Lai H-L (2023). From protected spaces to hybrid spaces: Mobilizing a place-centered enabling approach for justice-sensitive grassroots innovation studies. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 47, 100726-100726.
Lai H-L (2021). Foregrounding the community: Geo-historical entanglements of community energy, environmental justice, and place in Taihsi Village, Taiwan.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space,
5(2), 666-693.
Abstract:
Foregrounding the community: Geo-historical entanglements of community energy, environmental justice, and place in Taihsi Village, Taiwan
Studies on community energy have generated many useful insights concerning its potentials and challenges in facilitating energy transitions. However, this line of inquiry tends to overlook the crucial significance of site-specific contexts, concerns, and needs beyond the energy system and often generalizes these under a “civil society” umbrella. To study community energy on its own terms, this paper proposes a more grounded approach based on the relational place-making framework. It draws upon the case of the Taihsi Green Energy and Health Community Initiative in Taiwan to investigate how the emergence, development, and framing of this initiative are entangled with geo-historically produced concerns about the village’s socio-economic marginalization and suffering from petrochemical pollution. The findings suggest that community energy in this context was a proactive continuation of place-based activism for environmental justice; its value to this damaged community lied in its potential to create self-reliant socio-material relations alternative to those relied on the patronage of petrochemical interests. However, this justice-oriented aspiration tended to be discounted in national-level energy transitions agenda, revealing a tension between citizen-oriented and community-based energy projects. The paper argues that a relational place-based analysis is crucial in recognizing the grounded meanings and values of a community energy initiative, which can address the decontextualizing tendency in many community energy studies to better help policymakers and advocates enhance energy justice in disadvantaged communities.
Abstract.
Lai H-L (2021). Placing land and food struggles in agriculture-industry power asymmetry: insights from Wanbao Village, Taiwan. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 49(7), 1524-1552.
Lai H-L (2019). Situating community energy in development history: Place-making and identity politics in the Taromak 100% green energy tribe initiative, Taiwan. Geoforum, 100, 176-187.
Publications by year
2023
Lai H-L (2023). From protected spaces to hybrid spaces: Mobilizing a place-centered enabling approach for justice-sensitive grassroots innovation studies. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 47, 100726-100726.
2021
Lai H-L (2021). Foregrounding the community: Geo-historical entanglements of community energy, environmental justice, and place in Taihsi Village, Taiwan.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space,
5(2), 666-693.
Abstract:
Foregrounding the community: Geo-historical entanglements of community energy, environmental justice, and place in Taihsi Village, Taiwan
Studies on community energy have generated many useful insights concerning its potentials and challenges in facilitating energy transitions. However, this line of inquiry tends to overlook the crucial significance of site-specific contexts, concerns, and needs beyond the energy system and often generalizes these under a “civil society” umbrella. To study community energy on its own terms, this paper proposes a more grounded approach based on the relational place-making framework. It draws upon the case of the Taihsi Green Energy and Health Community Initiative in Taiwan to investigate how the emergence, development, and framing of this initiative are entangled with geo-historically produced concerns about the village’s socio-economic marginalization and suffering from petrochemical pollution. The findings suggest that community energy in this context was a proactive continuation of place-based activism for environmental justice; its value to this damaged community lied in its potential to create self-reliant socio-material relations alternative to those relied on the patronage of petrochemical interests. However, this justice-oriented aspiration tended to be discounted in national-level energy transitions agenda, revealing a tension between citizen-oriented and community-based energy projects. The paper argues that a relational place-based analysis is crucial in recognizing the grounded meanings and values of a community energy initiative, which can address the decontextualizing tendency in many community energy studies to better help policymakers and advocates enhance energy justice in disadvantaged communities.
Abstract.
Lai H-L (2021). Placing land and food struggles in agriculture-industry power asymmetry: insights from Wanbao Village, Taiwan. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 49(7), 1524-1552.
2019
Lai H-L (2019). Situating community energy in development history: Place-making and identity politics in the Taromak 100% green energy tribe initiative, Taiwan. Geoforum, 100, 176-187.
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