Announcing the 2026 EESG Award Winners!
Tiffany Grobelski
Dear EESG Community,
It is my great pleasure and honor to announce the 2026 EESG award winners and congratulate them, on behalf of the EESG Leadership Team:
- Dissertation Data & Fieldwork Award: Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo, University of California, Los Angeles, in recognition of the research project entitled "The Long Life of Off-Grid Energy Commons: Insights from Thirty-Five Years of Electropalmor"
- Best Student Paper Award: Deniz Mine Öztürk, Clark University, in recognition of the paper "Beneath the surface, injustice boils: Environmental justice struggles against geothermal energy in Turkey"
- Best Student Paper Award Honorable Mention: Bruce Baigrie, Syracuse University, in recognition of the paper "Stacking versus Displacement in the Mexican Energy Transition"
- Advancing Diversity & Inclusion Award: Lyric Patterson, University of Michigan, in recognition of her impressive work at the Detroit Sustainability Clinic and beyond
- Powershift Award: Sarah Kelly, Dartmouth College, in recognition of work associated with the Energy Justice Clinic, spanning various energy, environmental, and climate justice projects
- Energy Luminary Award: Dr. Tom Ptak, Texas State University, in recognition of the Dialogues in Human Geography paper "Repositioning energy geographies in a time of crisis: Arguments from a subdiscipline on the margins of geography"
- Energy Luminary Award Honorable Mention: Chinedu Nsude, University of Oklahoma, in recognition of the paper "Renewables but unjust? Critical restoration geography as a framework for addressing global renewable energy injustice"
We will recognize these award winners at our EESG Business Meeting during the upcoming AAG Annual Meeting. The Business Meeting is scheduled for Friday, March, 20, 2026, 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM US Pacific Time in the Hilton Union Square, 4th Floor, room: Union Square 25 [Link to business meeting details in the AAG Program]. The meeting will be hybrid format: in person and online. It will be followed by a social gathering, also hybrid, from 10:10AM-11:30AM in Yosemite Room B, Ballroom Level, Hilton, Tower 1,2,3 [Link to power hour energy geographers' gathering in AAG program]. All are welcome to attend.
Thank you, everyone reading this announcement, for your continued support of and involvement in the Energy and Environment Specialty Group. We hope to see many of you in person and online at the upcoming AAG conference.
Effusive congratulations to the winners!
Tiffany Grobelski, EESG Co-Chair