Delicado, Ana | Portugal

Ana Delicado is a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Lisbon (2006). She specialises in social studies of science. She has carried out research on non-governmental organisations and volunteering, environmental risks, museums of science and public understanding of science, international scientific mobility, the climate change research community, and scientific societies. She’s currently coordinating a research project on renewable energies and she participates in other studies concerning climate change and coastal areas, nuclear energy, and the use of the internet by children. She is vice-coordinator of OBSERVA Observatory of Environment and Society. She lectures on  Practices in transition: sustainability in daily life, of the PhD programme in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies, and also some seminars on the PhD programme in Sociology at the University of Lisbon.

Project at IAS-ST: Socio-technical consensus and controversies about renewable energies 

Socio-technical consensus and controversies about renewable energies is a research project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/CS-ECS/118877/2010), carried out between 2012 and 2014. Its main aim is to understand social attitudes towards macro-generation of renewable energies, namely solar and wind power plants in Portugal. The research problem is being examined at two levels, national and local.
On a national level, the project aims to build a wide-ranging picture of the actions and discourses of the social actors involved (politicians, policy makers, business companies, environmental NGOs,  scientists) by analysing the processes of developing policies and incentives, of planning and making decisions about specific locations, of addressing competing interests and values. Particular attention will be paid to the recourse to scientific advice and argumentation and to how citizen participation in deliberative procedures is envisaged. On a local level, the research comprises case studies of localities close to wind farms and solar power plants, analysing their effects on the perceptions and behaviours of local communities regarding social and economic advantages and disadvantages, environmental and health risks, transformations in landscape and land use, representations of technology and of renewable energies.

Selected Publications

Schmidt, Luísa, Delicado, Ana et al (2013). Change in the way we live and plan the coast: stakeholders discussions on future scenarios and adaptation strategies . Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 65, 1033-1038

Delicado, Ana (2012). Environmental education technologies in a social void: the case of ‘Greendrive’ . Environmental Education Research, Vol. 18, 6, 831-843. 

Delicado, Ana (2010). Exhibiting Science in Portugal: Practices and Representations in Museums. Portuguese Journal of Social Science Vol. 9, 1, 19-31.

Delicado, Ana (2010). For scientists, for students or for the public?: the shifting roles of natural history museums . Host: Journal of history of science and technology Vol. 4.

Gonçalves, Maria Eduarda, Delicado, Ana (2009). The Politics of Risk in Contemporary Portugal: Tensions in the Consolidation of Science-Policy Relations. Science and Public Policy Vol. 36, 3, 229-239.