Kari Dahlgren
Research Fellow
Emerging Technologies Research Lab - Monash University
Victoria
Dr. Kari Dahlgren is a Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab. Kari is a social anthropologist and ethnographer interested in the social and ethical aspects of energy production and consumption in Australia.
Her work is situated at the intersection of economic and environmental anthropology, with a particular interest in the anthropology of energy, climate change, and transition. Her doctoral thesis in Anthropology, completed at the London School of Economics, draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two Australian coal mining towns, focusing on the livelihoods entangled with the industry.
Speaker agenda
Digital Energy Futures Documentary Screening – WA Launch
Imagine a future life where your smartphone, watch, airpods and your electric car were automatically charged without you even knowing. What would it be like to give up control to an external system which optimises your energy use, decides when a robotic vacuum cleans your home and even when your electricity is available. Or are these even realistic or desirable futures?
This film explores how people living in Australia see their future lives in a country where increasingly extreme weather, concerns about public health, growing levels of technological automation, and a society dependent on digital media are set to create uncertainty about demand for electricity in the future. The filmmakers follow the everyday lives of five households to ask how they are inventing their own ways to live with emerging technologies, imagining and planning for their own futures in ways that might complicate the ambitions of industry and policy makers.
About the creators
Digital Energy Futures Documentary Screening – WA Launch
Imagine a future life where your smartphone, watch, airpods and your electric car were automatically charged without you even knowing. What would it be like to give up control to an external system which optimises your energy use, decides when a robotic vacuum cleans your home and even when your electricity is available. Or are these even realistic or desirable futures?
This film explores how people living in Australia see their future lives in a country where increasingly extreme weather, concerns about public health, growing levels of technological automation, and a society dependent on digital media are set to create uncertainty about demand for electricity in the future. The filmmakers follow the everyday lives of five households to ask how they are inventing their own ways to live with emerging technologies, imagining and planning for their own futures in ways that might complicate the ambitions of industry and policy makers.