Carol Hunsberger
Associate Professor
Contact Information
Office: Room 2409, SSCTel: 519 661-2111, 85020
E-mail: chunsber@uwo.ca
Research Areas
Political ecology, energy justice, biofuels, pipeline politics, environmental governanceResearch Interests
I am a human geographer interested in the political ecology of energy systems, especially biofuels and pipelines. On one level this means studying the outcomes of energy projects for livelihoods and ecologies across scales. On another level it means considering how discourses attached to climate change, economic priorities, and competing interpretations of development and the ‘public interest’ influence patterns of governance, investment, promotion and resistance for energy projects. I am especially interested in how people with different positions on controversial issues interpret justice and fairness, and how the diverse values and priorities that they raise are reflected in decision-making processes.
More broadly I am interested in land use and the governance of environmental change. I have a persistent side interest in the politics of knowledge and how environmental issues are communicated. At different times this has expressed itself through work on scenario analysis, experiential education, global environmental assessment reports and community radio. Previously I have worked in Kenya though my current research focus is on energy projects in Canada.
Teaching
GEO 1500 – Environment and Development Challenges
GEO 3443 – Energy and Power
GEO 4450 – Climate Change and Collective Action
GEO 9120 – Environmental Justice
Supervised Graduate Students and Theses Titles
PhD Students
- C. Dakin (current) Indigenous Energy Justice
Masters Students
- B. Davey (joint-supervised) (Current) Un/Bound breasts: A geographical account of embodiment
- S. Doris (2020) Barriers to Access: The experience of energy poverty & extreme heat
- I. Diaz (2016) Coffee Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and Agrarian Livelihoods in Puerto Rico
- M. Boes (2013) Household livelihood diversification and perceived vulnerability to risks in rural Mali
- E. Wabusya (2013) Policy Outcomes and Community Perceptions of a Dryland Invasive Species: A Case Study of Prosopis juliflora in Baringo County, Kenya
- 2M. Awuni (2013) Dilemmas of implementing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+): Evidence from REDD+ pilots in Ghana
Publications & Supervised Graduate Students and Theses Titles
Refereed Journals
Hunsberger, C and R Kløcker Larsen. 2021. The spatial politics of energy conflicts: how competing constructions of scale shape pipeline and shale gas struggles in Canada. Energy Research and Social Science.
Creutzig, F, K‐H Erb, H Haberl, C Hof, C Hunsberger, and S Roe. 2021. Considering sustainability thresholds for BECCS in IPCC and biodiversity assessments. GCB Bioenergy.
Hunsberger, C, S Froese and G Hoberg. 2020. Toward ‘good process’ in Canadian regulatory reviews: Is the new system any better than the old? Environmental Impact Assessment Review.
Mang-Benza, C and C Hunsberger. 2020. Wandering identities in energy transitions: Political leaders’ use of the “we” pronoun in Ontario, 2009-2019. The Canadian Geographer.
Hunsberger, C and S Awâsis. 2019. Energy justice and Canada’s National Energy Board: A critical analysis of the Line 9 decision. Sustainability.
Diaz, I and C Hunsberger. 2018. Can agroecological coffee be part of a food sovereignty strategy in Puerto Rico? Geoforum.
Hunsberger, C, Work, C and R Herre. 2018. Linking climate change strategies and resource conflicts in Cambodia: Evidence from the Greater Aural Region. World Development.
Goetz, A, T Searchinger, T Beringer, L German, B McKay, G de LT Oliveira, and C Hunsberger. 2018. Reply to commentary on the special issue Scaling up biofuels: A critical look at expectations, performance and governance. Energy Policy.
Hunsberger, C, L German and A Goetz. 2017. “Unbundling” biofuels: querying the ability of liquid biofuels to deliver on socio-economic policy expectations. Energy Policy.
Goetz, A, L German, C Hunsberger and O Schmidt. 2017. Do no harm? Risk perceptions in national bioenergy policies and actual mitigation performance. Energy Policy.
German, L, A Goetz, T Searchinger, G de LT Oliveira, J Tomei, C Hunsberger and J Weigelt. 2017. Sine Qua Nons of sustainable biofuels: Distilling implications of under-performance for national biofuel programs. Energy Policy.
Corbera, E, C Hunsberger and C Vaddhanaphuti. 2017. Climate change policies, land grabbing and conflict: perspectives from Southeast Asia. Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
Hunsberger, C, E Corbera, SM Borras Jr, R de la Rosa, V Eang, JC Franco, R Herre, SS Kham, C Park, S Sokheng, M Spoor, S Thein, K Thu, R Thuon, C Vaddhanaphuti, K Woods and C Work. 2017. Land-based climate change mitigation, land grabbing and conflict: towards a landscape-based and collaborative research agenda. Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
Robledo-Abad, C, HJ Althaus, G Berndes, S Bolwig, E Corbera, F Creutzig, J Garcia-Ulloa, A Geddes, JS Gregg, H Haberl, S Hanger, R Harper, C Hunsberger, RK Larsen, C Lauk, S Leitner, J Lilliestam, H Lotze-Campen, B Muys, M Nordborg, M Ölund, B Orlowsky, A Popp, J Portugal-Pereira, J Reinhard, L Scheiffle and P Smith. 2016. Bioenergy production and sustainable development: science base for policy-making remains limited. GCB Bioenergy.
Hunsberger, C. 2016. Explaining bioenergy: Narratives of jatropha before and after disappointing results. SpringerPlus.
Hunsberger, C and A Alonso-Fradejas. 2016. The discursive flexibility of ‘flex crops’: comparing oil palm and jatropha. Journal of Peasant Studies.
Chapters in Books
Hunsberger, C. 2021. Biofuels. In: Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies, H Akram-Lodhi, B McKay, K Dietz and B Engels (eds). Edward Elgar.
Wang, C, SM Borras and C Hunsberger. 2016. Contemporary agrarian transformation and rural development: large-scale land investment and the question of labour. In: Towards employment intensive growth in South Africa, A Black (Ed), pp 156-176. University of Cape Town Press.
