Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Spatial Development and Urban Policy (SPUR) group and an affiliate at the Development Economics Group (DEC) at ETH Zurich.
My work is motivated by the idea that universal access to modern, affordable energy is important for alleviating poverty and respecting human dignity. In practice, my research covers three sub-topics: the tension between energy access and climate change, technology policy and planning for universal access, and the creation of unique quantitative datasets to study the adoption and use of electricity services and other technologies.
Electricity underlies much of human progress over the last century or so and greater use of electricity is imagined to undergird the clean energy transition, however, millions of people still lack access to enough reliable, affordable electricity to allow them to engage and prosper in the modern world, let alone a clean energy future. My projects focus on these people, their lived experiences, and the ways in which technology innovation and planning both have the potential to either expand access or further isolate or exclude populations that are already marginalized.
Addressing global energy inequality, requires working in both an inter- and transdisciplinary way. This problem does not lie at the feet of any one discipline, institution, country, or group of people, but rather demands engaging deeply within and across stakeholders at various levels. My projects all put this conviction into practice and my teaching goals center on helping students to question disciplinary assumptions as well as their own personal biases when they think about access to infrastructure.
This approach also underlies my motivation to write and speak about the energy challenges of our time to a wide variety of audiences, such as policymakers, the general public, as well as other academics.
My CV is available to download here.
Yael Borofsky 