Research design and codes of practice for maximising the impact of energy and climate social science

Researchers today need to secure funding, collaborate, share data, publish results, commercialise research, and demonstrate impact. Early career researchers in particular are faced with multiple pressures around these challenges.

This workshop with Professor Benjamin Sovacool will help early career researchers gain an understanding of how to design their research more effectively, and how to improve the chances of getting work published. Using examples from the energy and climate social sciences field, it will bring attention to the importance of clearly articulating research questions, objectives, and designs. It will provide a framework for conceptualising novelty. It will suggest codes of practice to improve the quality and rigour of research. It will provide guidelines for improving the style and communication of results. It will lastly discuss what academic (and non-academic) impact are and propose ways to enhance it. In doing so, the presentation will give you first-hand insights into successful research methodologies, what journal editors (and reviewers) look for, as well as advice on how to successfully promote your work.

Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School. He is also Professor of Business & Social Sciences and Director of the Centre for Energy Technologies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Professor Sovacool works as a researcher and consultant on issues pertaining to energy policy, energy justice, energy security, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation.  More specifically, his research focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, the ethics and morality of energy decisions, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.  He is a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), due to be published in 2022, and an Advisor on Energy to the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation in Brussels, Belgium.