Dr Kari Dahlgren is a social anthropologist and ethnographer whose research examines the social and ethical dimensions of energy production, consumption, and transformation in Australia. Her research brings together the anthropology of energy, futures anthropology, and the study of industrial transformation.

Her recently published monograph, Coal’s Final Void: Extracted Futures and the Everyday Making of the Climate Crisis (2025), draws from ethnographic research in Australian coal regions to trace the complex social, ethical, and political dynamics that sustain fossil fuel economies. It examines the contradictory ways communities, workers, and industry lobbyists navigate the anticipated end of coal, and theorises the “final void” as a site where extractive pasts and speculative futures are held in tension.

She has an ongoing program of research on energy futures, including collaborative projects with industry and policy partners that explore changing patterns of household energy demand and interdisciplinary scenario-building such as the Digital Energy Futures and Scenarios for Future Living projects, which integrate ethnographic research into energy system planning.

She also studies industrial decarbonisation in Australia, revealing how decarbonisation is unfolding through processes of addition and infrastructural layering, in which “old” and “new” systems coexist and intersect. This includes how extractive and fossil fuel industries, materialities, and logics, remain embedded within emerging low-carbon industries and imaginaries.

Her research is broadly concerned with how futures are anticipated and negotiated, and with the uneven effects that follow.

Current Projects

Hydrogen Hub Futures (ARC DECRA)
An ethnographic study of Australia’s emerging hydrogen industry, focusing on the hydrogen hub model as a central strategy for industrial decarbonisation. The project explores how these large-scale developments are reshaping regional communities, and how different social, economic, and environmental futures are being imagined, implemented, and contested.

Embedding Net Zero Carbon Emissions in Northern Australia (ARC Discovery Project)
A collaborative project with Timothy Neale (Deakin), Matthew Kearnes (UNSW), Tess Lea (Macquarie), Christopher Mayes (Deakin), and Gisa Weszkalnys (LSE). It examines how large-scale net zero initiatives take shape in the NT, focused on the everyday ethics of how various stakeholders interpret and respond to them

Scenarios for Future Living (RACE for 2030 CRC)
A multi-partner project that develops people-centred energy futures by bringing ethnographic insight into scenario-building and energy modelling. It works across research and industry to better anticipate how everyday practices, new technologies, and social change will shape future energy systems.

Co-designing a Sustainable Data Centre Hub (APPI Policy Challenge Grant)
A collaborative project led by Dr Bronwyn Cumbo (University of Technology Sydney) that addresses the rapid growth of data centres in New South Wales. Working with government, industry, and community partners, the project develops a roadmap for a more sustainable and socially responsive data centre sector.