Dr. Helene Ahlborg

Helene Ahlborg’s research is about rural electrification in East Africa and social transformation. Her thesis has the title "Walking along the lines of power" and is available online since May 2015. She studies the co-development of technology and society and how provision of electricity services, based on small-scale renewable energy resources, impacts on people’s lives and transforms rural communities. But also, how the local context and especially social, economic and power relations between poor and rich, women and men, young and old, village and town, etc. influence the electrification process and impacts on the long-term viability of the energy system. Most of her empirical work is carried out in Tanzania in case studies of small-scale electric production systems. Her background is in social environmental science and theoretically her work builds on and contributes to debates in the fields of energy and development, rural development, science and technology, socionatures, feminist theory and institutional theory. Helene works with colleagues at Chalmers but also at Political Science and School of Global Studies, at Göteborg University, as well as with Tanzania colleagues. She teaches on a variety of development, energy and environment-related topics also outside of academia e.g. in the context of UNIDO-organized trainings.