DPhil Student
St Cross College
Working Title: The Post-Life of Oil: Decommissioning and the Energy Transition within the North Sea
Research: The primary investigative focus of this project is on the decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure and the development of decarbonized energy futures within the North Sea. Halfway through what the North Sea Transition Authority proclaimed to be the “Decade of Decommissioning”, this research project examines the relationship between decommissioning and pluralistic constructions of “responsibility” across time by oil and gas industry stakeholders. Engaging with scholarship on infrastructure, post-industrialism, toxicity, as well as economic and legal anthropology, I aim to situate the end of life processing of hydrocarbon installations into anthropological debates as both a socially generative object of study and an urgent call to action to address the climate crisis.
This research ultimately advances collective efforts to ensure the efficacy of the energy transition through an exposition of the potentiality of post-oil futures, alongside a primacy to the infrastructural legacies which will endure within a decarbonized world.
Research Interests: Energy Ethics, Decommissioning, Post-Oil Futures, Economic Anthropology, Legal Anthropology
Email: ava.rawson@stx.ox.ac.uk
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ava-rawson-9a1668196/
