The Generator Project (2023) was a multi-sited, multi-campus, and multi-disciplinary undergraduate seminar on energy justice, culminating in a field school experience. We envisioned it as a response to the ongoing challenges regarding energy generation and distribution, including the creation of sustainable, resilient, and equitable systems.
What is this guide? This guide is a visual overview of the evolution of the Generator Project, including outlines and resources for creating an inventive and comprehensive approach for reaching and connecting students from disparate backgrounds and institutions (from large public universities to private small liberal arts colleges). Intended for anyone engaging in complex research projects that are both local and transnational, the guide provides a visual template and resources for planning, implementing, and reflecting on a multi-sited seminar culminating in a field school experience.
Who is it for? While we chose energy justice as our major overarching topic, there are numerous topics that this guide would be beneficial for, including water, waste, food, transportation, health, security, etc. We believe the framework we designed is adaptable and scalable for a multitude of topics and pedagogies, and can be used by anyone seeking to construct a comprehensive and topical field school experience.
How to use it? The guide includes a timeline of our activities, main themes, a sample lesson plan, an overview of students’ outputs, readings, and a list of lectures.
Why are we sharing it? We hope that this downloadable pdf will be a helpful guide to others engaging in similar inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary projects with students and other learners. At a moment in history where divisiveness is the rule rather than cooperation, we hope that this guide to the Generator Project supports the development of cross-cultural/spatial/temporal connections, understanding, and empathy amongst participants.
We also acknowledge the incredible difficulty of logistics in a project that spans across a 12- hour time difference, and even larger cultural, historical, and political gulfs. This guide seeks to honor the time and effort put forth by the students, faculty, and administrators, as well as local interlocutors and experts, who participated in this project.
Siarhei Liubimau is a co-founder and lead of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism (2007) and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the European Humanities University in Vilnius (2014). For his doctoral research, he worked with the issue of trans-border urbanism and studied changes of EU internal and external border regimes as urban scale specific processes. Empirically, he worked on towns on the German-Polish and Polish-Belarusian borders (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Science, 2005-2010), as well as with the borders of Luxembourg (Bauhaus-Dessau Kolleg 'EU Urbanism', 2006-2007). Starting from 2015, he has been engaged in the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism in various research, educational and soft planning projects in the former 'nuclear' town of Visaginas in Eastern Lithuania (satellite of the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant). Together with Benjamin Cope, he has edited a book 'Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nuclear Town' (2021), documenting LCU work in Visaginas in 2016-2020. From 2018 he is part of CityIndustries research network. He has been a fellow at the Central European University (Budapest), the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.
Jen Richter is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is also a senior sustainability scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at ASU.
Her research interests are at the intersections of science, environment, and society, and she teaches courses on environmental justice, science and society, and energy policy. She is especially interested in how federal policies are created and then taken up by local populations, specifically in the American West. Professor Richter focuses on energy justice, specifically in relation to the cultural, political, and environmental issues that come with larger energy transitions. Her research has focused on the environmental and social issues related to nuclear waste storage, and renewable energy production, and how policies are developed to address issues of production of resources, as well as contamination of land, water, and air. By examining how science and technology policies collide with local expectations and understandings of environment and politics, Professor Richter explores the different effects of energy technologies and policies, and their effects on society at different scales, from the local to the global.
English
, Arizona State University (USA)
Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle
Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle
Hampton University
Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle is Professor of the Department of Architecture at Hampton University in Virginia. She received a Bachelor in Environmental Design and a Master of Architecture professional degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and a doctoral degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan. She is a licensed architect registered in Puerto Rico. Sanchez-del-Valle has taught at the University of Kansas and the Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University. She is a recipient of the Hampton University Edward L. Hamm, Jr. Teaching Excellence Award, and is an ACSA Distinguished Professor. She has been a Fulbright-Hays Senior Scholar in Egypt collaborating with Dr. Amr Abdel-Kawi, an ASEE Fellow in NASA LaRC, and a FRN-NYU Summer Scholar-in-Residence. She is a member of the collaborative Mapping Meaning founded by Krista Caballero and Sylvia Torti.
Her research has focused on the integration of computer-based tools into architectural education and practice for design thinking, and the management of design information. She has developed models for mapping historical districts as graphic relational databases. She has investigated the use of adaptive kinetic systems as analogical vehicles to teach about digital modeling, complex systems, and sustainability. She has written about graphic novels as thick descriptions of the city. Currently, she teaches the design research studio and advanced topics in building technology and community design. This last is connected to the micro seminar “Living by Water” she co-teaches with Dr. Amee Carmines from English Literature.
BCB: Aleksandra Vartsaba, Gabriela Cangussu dos Santos, Leonie Hüppe
The Generator Project field school organizing team
Siarhei Liubimau
Siarhei Liubimau
European Humanities University
Siarhei Liubimau is a co-founder and lead of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism (2007) and Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the European Humanities University in Vilnius (2014). For his doctoral research, he worked with the issue of trans-border urbanism and studied changes of EU internal and external border regimes as urban scale specific processes. Empirically, he worked on towns on the German-Polish and Polish-Belarusian borders (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Science, 2005-2010), as well as with the borders of Luxembourg (Bauhaus-Dessau Kolleg 'EU Urbanism', 2006-2007). Starting from 2015, he has been engaged in the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism in various research, educational and soft planning projects in the former 'nuclear' town of Visaginas in Eastern Lithuania (satellite of the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant). Together with Benjamin Cope, he has edited a book 'Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nuclear Town' (2021), documenting LCU work in Visaginas in 2016-2020. From 2018 he is part of CityIndustries research network. He has been a fellow at the Central European University (Budapest), the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.
