In my ARIA project, “Interdisciplinary Energy: Keywords for the Just Storage Project,” I assembled a list of keywords in support of the Just Storage Project—a project that aims create an interdisciplinary framework to guide research, policy, and action in the development of energy storage technologies and systems. The Just Storage Project is led by Professor Darin Barney (PI) of the Grierson Research Group, Professor Eric McCalla of the McCalla Lab, and Professor Mylene Riva, Canada Research Chair in Housing, Community, and Health. The framework that the project seeks to create will facilitate collaboration between research scholars from media studies, social sciences, and the sciences and engineering.
Under the supervision of Professor Barney, I worked on creating a list of keywords from these different fields of study, particularly those of media studies and energy humanities. Though not commonly viewed as closely connected with energy, media studies explores how the technical features of storage media inform social relations—some scholars understand technologies that store storage physical goods as media. Media studies and energy humanities highlight how energy storage technologies impact political, economic, and social arrangements and the implications of arrangements for achieving justice.
These keywords were designed to draw connections between storage media, energy storage, and environmental justice and to help familiarize members of the Just Project team with relevant vocabulary of other areas of study. My research process involved conducting a literature review of the relevant fields to gather key terminology and interviewing Professor McCalla and Professor Riva to discuss the important concepts in their respective disciplines. I then wrote a definition to accompany each selected keyword that explained the term and discussed its significance with respect to the Just Storage Project.
I became interested in doing an ARIA project to gain experience performing scholarly research in communications studies and organizing a research timeline under the guidance of a professor. I also hoped to hone my academic reading and writing skills. My learning objectives for this project in particular were to gain more familiarity with infrastructural studies as a field within media studies and to learn how to present my work in a concise and effective manner in the form of a research poster and oral presentation.
One highlight of the internship was getting the opportunity to discuss my research with Professor Barney and receiving his guidance throughout the project. For example, during our conversations, Professor Barney would often point me in the direction of resources that assisted my work and expanded my understanding of the keywords I was working on. Another aspect of the internship that stood out was interviewing Professor McCalla and Professor Riva about their research. It was interesting to discuss the points at which vocabulary between different disciplines aligned and diverged, and to think about how these differences might bear on interdisciplinary conversations about energy storage.
One challenge I encountered during the writing process was deciding which information associated with some of the keywords to include, and what to leave out. A strategy I developed to work through this difficulty was to read as much as possible about each of the keywords, and to select only the details that reappeared frequently and had the greatest relevance to the Just Storage Project. Reading a wide array of academic literature was also useful in helping me make sense of complicated keywords such as “extraction/extractivism” and “time-bias/space-bias.” When unable to parse them out myself, consulting Professor Barney for assistance in understanding these concepts allowed me to make the most out of the eleven weeks of research.
This ARIA internship has enhanced my ability to synthesize information from academic articles and has greatly improved my writing and research skills. As someone interested in potentially pursuing a career in journalism, these skills will undoubtedly serve me well in the future. This internship also allowed me to explore research on energy storage from many perspectives, especially those rooted in media studies and energy humanities. It has been exciting to investigate these academic fields more thoroughly after having been introduced to them in some of my classes. I will undoubtedly take a sense of curiosity about the connections between humanities and energy studies with me as I complete my final year of my undergraduate degree, and after my time at McGill has passed.
Thank you to Mr. Harry Samuel for his generous financial contribution that made this experience possible!
