Teaching

Powering the Planet - Electricity is ubiquitous in most of our daily lives, yet over 800M people lack access to electricity globally. Drivers of this discrepancy and pathways to reduce the gap in electricity access will form the bases of Powering the Planet. Using principles of economics, engineering and public policy we will examine the different facets of electricity supply, how demand for electricity influences its generation and distribution infrastructure and finally, the concept of just energy transitions, focusing on renewable energy technology and the associated challenges in its expansion. There will be opportunities to explore tensions between providing electricity access and ensuring environmental sustainability across different countries through projects.

Applied Geographical Data Science - Geography increasingly relies on empirical data to understand social and environmental phenomena. This module will build a foundation for applied data analysis, emphasizing the fundamental data science tasks of wrangling, visualization, and analysis. Each of these tasks requires an understanding of quantitative approaches to generate and evaluate hypotheses. As such, the module will also cover essential concepts in statistics including expectation, hypothesis testing, and regression. By the end of the module, students will have a strong foundation to analyze multivariate data and communicate findings using open-source programming tools.

Transition to Clean and Just Energy - Carbon emissions from energy account for over two-thirds of all global emissions and offer an avenue for mitigating climate change via a transition to clean energy.  Electrifying end-use sectors and shifting electricity production towards clean sources form the basis of the decarbonised energy transition. Challenges associated with decarbonisation require an interdisciplinary approach that considers scientific and socio-environmental constraints and opportunities. This course will introduce students to the pillars, major challenges and benefits of transitioning to clean energy. Students will learn how the harnessing of clean energy technologies can be optimised to ensure rapid and fair transition to a low/zero-carbon future.