In this PhD project, PhD Candidate Shayan Shokrgozar studies the imaginaries and praxes around solar energy rollout in Rajasthan, India.
India has emerged as one of the most prominent countries in deploying lower-carbon energy, especially Solar PV. Broadly speaking, Solar PV is expected to supply the growing need for electricity in India, while allowing for the generation of cleaner energy–50% by 2030.
My project seeks to understand the implication of Solar PV projects for the other-than-human and the citizenry. Industrial-scale solar “parks” rely upon the appropriation of thousands of acres of land, which despite being designated as “wastelands”, are used by agropastoral peoples for sustainable farming and grazing cattle.
By studying the implications of solar rollout, my project aims to propose place-based alternative energy futures that utilize the new possibilities presented by solar PV to enhance socioecological wellbeing.
Shokrgozar, Shayan; Naik, Ashish; Shrestha, Subina (2025). “This will destroy Jeev and Jantu”: infrastructures of modernity across water, energy, and land in Jaisalmer, India. (ekstern lenke)
Shokrgozar, Shayan; Sareen, Siddharth (2025). “Mitti se Sona [Gold from Dirt]?”: Solar India and colonial modernity in Agropastoral Rajasthan. (ekstern lenke)
Sareen, Siddharth; Haarstad, Håvard; Gong, Huiwen et al. (2024). Watt sense of community? A human geography agenda on energy communities. (ekstern lenke)
Girard, Berenice Rachel Esther; Shokrgozar, Shayan; Sareen, Siddharth (2024). The meaning of solar energy: Political imaginaries of solar energy in contemporary India. (ekstern lenke)
Shokrgozar, Shayan; Girard, Berenice Rachel Esther (2024). “The companies are powerful, people are weak”: India’s solar energy ambitions and the legitimation of dispossession in Rajasthan. (ekstern lenke)
Shokrgozar, Shayan; Remme, Devyn Helen Avhild; Stock, Ryan (2024). “We Have to Convince Them Whatever it Takes:” The Climate Necropolitics of Energy Transitions in India and Zambia. (ekstern lenke)
Sareen, Siddharth; Shokrgozar, Shayan; Scharnigg, Renée Margaritha et al. (2023). Accountable solar energy transitions in financially constrained contexts. (ekstern lenke)
Shayan Shokrgozar PhD Candidate
Siddharth Sareen Professor, FNI & CET
Håvard Haarstad Professor, CET & Department of Geography
