CIG 2021 Keynote Speakers
Lars Coenen
Professor in Innovation and Sustainability Transitions at the Moon Centre for Innovationand Regional Development at the Western Norway University of Applied Science in Bergen, Norway.
Biography:
Lars Coenen is Professor in Innovation and Sustainability Transitions at the Mohn Centre for Innovation and Regional Development. He is an economic geographer and scholar in innovation studies. His research interests converge around the geography of innovation: Why is it that some regions and cities in the world stand out in their ability to foster and diffuse novelty? What explains this spatial concentration of innovation in an era of globalization? How can regions and cities improve their capacity to innovate?In particular he is interested in addressing this broad set of questions on innovations related to pressing societal challenges such as climate change. Professor Coenen is well-known internationally for his work on regional and urban innovation and, in particular, his pioneering research on the geography of environmental innovation and sustainability transitions.
Jennifer McKinley
Professor of Geology and Mathematical Geoscience and Director of the Centre for GIS and Geomatics, Queen's University Belfast.
Biography:
Professor Jennifer McKinley, Director of the Centre for GIS and Geomatics, is based in Geography, in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include the development and creative application of spatial analysis techniques including Geographical Information Science (GIS), geostatistics and compositional data analysis. Jennifer’s research seeks to gain a greater understanding of the link between human health and environmental impacts from natural and anthropogenic sources, including air pollution and more recently surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.
Benjamin Sovacool
Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Boston University.
Biography:
Benjamin K. Sovacool is Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School in the UK and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Boston University. He works as a researcher and consultant on issues pertaining to global energy policy and politics, energy security, energy justice, 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, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, the ethics of energy, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.