Peltola, Taru | Finland
Fellow at IAS-STS: 2003/2004
Taru Peltola studied geography at the University of Joensuu and obtained her master's degree in regional studies at the University of Tampere in 1997. She defended her licentiate thesis in environmental policy in May 2003 at the University of Tampere. The subject of her thesis was alternative technologies and flexibility in municipal energy production. She has worked in various research projects at the Department of Regional Studies and Environmental Policy, University of Tampere, since her graduation. She has also been a lecturer teaching research methodology and introductory courses to science and technology studies.
Her special fields of interest are bioenergy, technological transformation, environmental politics and livelihood of peripheral areas.
Project at IAS-STS: Environmentally sound technology alternatives and public energy management
She is currently working on the social construction of bioenergy in Finland. She analyses the development of different wood fuel technologies and the socio-economic consequences of these technological frameworks. In addition, she aims to align her social scientific analysis with policy processes: to point out alternative knowledges and practices and their significance to sustainability of wood fuel production. This is challenging in the Finnish context in which both forest industry and small entrepreneurs are building wood fuel production chains and may end up in conflicting situations.
Selected Publications
Åkerman, M. & Peltola, T. (2002). Temporal Scales and Environmental Knowledge Production. Landscape & Urban Planning vol. 61, no. 2-4, 15 November, Special issue: Scaling and Environmental Understanding.
Peltola, T. Calculating the Futures: Stability and Change in a Local Energy Production System. In Dyke, C. & Haila, Y. (eds) How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition. Submitted to Duke University Press.
Åkerman, M. & Peltola, T. Constituting the space for decision making - Conflicting calculations in a dispute over fuel choice in a local heating plant. Submitted to Geoforum