Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi

Agnieszka JONIAK-LÜTHI is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg and head of the project “Maintaining Relations: Community-owned Hydropower Infrastructure Through Time.”

 Agnieszka graduated in China Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland and completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She has held research and teaching positions at her alma mater, and at the universities of Bern, St Gallen, Zurich and Fribourg in Switzerland, LMU Munich in Germany, and Sichuan University and Xinjiang University in China. She has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Washington, Oslo University and the University of Cambridge.

 Agnieszka has spent more than four years studying and conducting research in China, first in the lush southwest, then in the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai, and most recently in the arid northwest. Since 2018, she has expanded her research to Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian post-socialist countries, as well as to Central Europe. Between 2018-2023, Agnieszka led the research project ROADWORK: An Anthropology of Infrastructure at China's Inner Asian Borders, which focused on roads being built in the China-Central Asia borderlands as part of the One Belt One Road Initiative. Since 2019, Agnieszka has also been the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Access journal Roadsides.

 In the “Maintaining Relations” project, Agnieszka is addressing the question of how decentralized energy production can be successfully maintained over time and how it can strengthen economic and social structures in local communities. She is focusing on the Swiss Alps, where decentralized hydropower production has been in place for more than a hundred years, providing valuable knowledge to help answer these questions.

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Elisabeth Schubiger

Elisabeth SCHUBIGER is a social anthropologist specialising in infrastructure, resource management and sustainable development. Elisabeth completed her doctorate in social anthropology at the Graduate Institute of Development and International Studies in Geneva. In her dissertation, ‘Turkana Oil Prospects: Petroscapes, Development Limbos and Self-Accomplishment at Kenya's Northern Frontier’, she examined the social dynamics of oil exploration in northern Kenya and developed critical insights into how communities deal with infrastructural changes. This research background directly informs her current work on sustainable energy prospects.

 Her postdoctoral research, titled ‘Maintaining Relations: Community-owned Hydropower Infrastructure Through Time’, examines decentralised hydropower production in the Swiss Alpine region. Elisabeth investigates how local communities have maintained decentralised energy infrastructures for more than a century. She focuses on the Swiss Alpine regions and addresses the social, infrastructural, and economic mechanisms that enable long-term, community-operated small hydroelectric power plants. She shows how kinship and local institutions maintain and adapt this critical infrastructure across generations. In doing so, it is important to Elisabeth to combine academic research with strategies for practical development through a transdisciplinary approach, and to explore the nuanced interfaces between scientific research, local knowledge and sustainable innovation.

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Hannah Plüss Quintanilla Fernandez

Hannah PLÜSS QUINTANILLA FERNANDEZ is a social and cultural anthropologist. She has a particular interest in urban and rural infrastructure and the evolution of social and cultural movements from the perspective of political ecology, feminism, and decolonial theories. Since completing her bachelor’s degree in social science and her master's degree in Latin American studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland, she has been conducting research on (protests against) hydropower production in Latin America, specifically in Ecuador and Peru. Her MA thesis, ‘Development or Justice? The (De-)Construction of a Political Conflict around a Hydroelectric Power Plant in San Pablo de Amalí, Ecuador,’ sheds light on the political and social conflict lines that evolved around a small hydropower plant in rural Ecuador.

In July 2024, Hannah started her PhD as part of ‘Maintaining Relations: Community-owned Hydropower Infrastructure Through Time.’ Her thesis examines how rural communities in Latin America manage and maintain their decentralized hydropower infrastructures over several decades. With this focus, the thesis builds on the ideas and investigations of her MA thesis and promises to extend the knowledge around rural hydropower production.

Hannah pursues a collaborative approach in her projects. It is of crucial importance for her to conduct knowledge exchanges and cooperations with activists and community leaders on an equal footing. She wants to do research that contributes to transdisciplinary knowledge on how not only ecologically, but also socially sustainable energy can be produced.

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