Rice University
IN-4: Innovation 4

The Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS), opened in 2013, is the first effort to involve all the intellectual resources of a major research university in addressing today’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges. CENHS is likewise a first-of-its-kind: the only research center in the world specifically designed to sponsor research on the energy/environment nexus across the arts, humanities and social sciences. Currently, the majority of energy and sustainability research centers across the world focus on the sciences, engineering and policy analysis; however, Rice’s basis for starting the CENHS was its belief that the riddles of the world’s energy transition and anthropogenic climate change are also profoundly social and cultural. The CENHS believes that we need to better understand habits, beliefs, knowledge, ethics, values, practices and institutions if we are to hope for change. From past experience, we know that there can be no technological solutions to climate change without successful programs of implementation, and implementation is always a social, cultural and political process. Thus, the CENHS was developed to find ways to bring the expertise of the humanities and social sciences more directly to bear on scientific research, technological planning and policy discussions. CENHS currently has four active research clusters — Arts & Media, Catastrophe & Aesthetics, Ethics & Philosophy, and Social Analytics – each of which is tasked with developing a different area of energy and environmental research in the human sciences. Furthermore, the CENHS organizes activities to bring together faculty and students interested in energy and environmental research, offering opportunities for junior and senior research fellowships, and sponsoring events to connect with the public. At the same time working together with universities in Canada, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom, CENHS is helping to build the first international research network in energy and environmental human sciences.

CENHS hosts an annual “Cultures of Energy” Symposium where leading local, national and international scholars working at the intersection of energy, the environment and the humanities gather to collaborate with one another, share their research and discuss emerging energy topics. In May of 2014, CENHS hosted its Third (and largest) Annual Spring Symposium. CENHS also created the first introduction to energy humanities course in the United States.