Eva Gray
Job Title
Research Fellow
Research interests
Research interests
I am a current Research Fellow for the Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society (EPICS) Center. My research for EPICS focuses on the governance of demand-side flexibility and the integration of consumer and distributed energy resources into renewable energy grids. This work involves understanding interdisciplinary social science approaches to examine how policy, institutions, industry and consumers can support equitable energy transitions.
Broadly, I am interested in sociotechnical analyses of technological change, first in the context of the transport transition and now more widely in the energy transition. I approach these transitions as sociotechnical processes: not just how technologies work, but how language, institutions, experimentation, predicted futures, and different stakeholders shape what technologies come to mean and what becomes possible. The interdisciplinarity of studying heterogeneous actors – from engineers, regulators, manufacturers and members of industry to policymakers, consumers and the general public – involves examining issues of framing, communication and narratives about climate change.
My research interests have centered around the social construction of technology, namely the gendering of the automobile and its surrounding mobility cultures. I enjoy approaching sociology from the starting point of our technological artifacts and the meanings and actions that surround them. Our increasingly technologically-mediated interaction with the natural world is of particular interest, as well as how STS-informed perspectives can tell us more about our relationships to our environments, technologies and each other.
Background
My background has been in Science and Technology Studies since I was an undergraduate at Vassar College in New York. I came to the University of Edinburgh as a Vassar Maguire Fellow for my STS MScR. My doctoral research was on electric car racing, gendered narratives around driving, and environmentalism. I used the idea of the 'race-to-road' transfer as a conceptual bridge for understanding how innovation moves from an experimental/testbed space to a wider system. Examining the role of new electric car racing leagues in facilitating electric vehicle (EV) adoption, my ESRC-funded PhD project, Electric Vehicles and the Race to Road Transfer: Identity, Culture and the Transition to Sustainable Mobility, developed a theoretical framework around the emergent sociotechnical identity of the EV. I coupled this with my interest in sustainability, co-authoring the chapter Gender, Diversity and Care for the upcoming Edward Elgar Handbook on Sustainable Lifestyles.
Within the University of Edinburgh, I have tutored on Social Theory in Sociology and various STS courses including Technology in Society, Energy Policy and Sustainability, and Science, Nature and Environment. I am also an Adjunct Professor of Sociology for Connecticut State.