Profile
Dr Gareth Fearn is a postdoctoral researcher, whose work focuses on the political economy of the energy transition, planning reform and housing policy. His research identifies the tensions and limits of the neoliberal governance of energy and urban development. His work contributes to wider theoretical debates on neoliberalism and capitalism, as well as to the specific analysis of the sectors he researches.
Gareth has two core research agendas. The first agenda is on the political economy of energy, and how the most recent/ongoing energy crisis is precipitating a shift to what he has termed ‘electro-capitalism’. This work analyses the development of the 2021/22 energy crisis and the relationship between the electricity system and the infrastructural build-out required for a low-carbon system. He will publish a monograph in 2027 entitled ‘Neoliberalism and the Age of Electricity’ with Manchester University Press.
The second agenda also address energy, as well as issues of urban and environmental governance and housing policy. His earlier research began with my Economic and Social Research Council-funded doctoral research at Newcastle’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and identified an ‘authoritarian turn’ in urban and environmental planning, since the global financial crisis. He developed his research on planning practices further whilst at UCL, with a smaller project on a plan to re-open a coal mine in Whitehaven in the north of England.
Alongside his academic work, Gareth regularly contributes to policy development and public scholarship, though short form articles, podcasts and media appearances.