Research group for the ethnographic inquiry into ecologies, infrastructures, bodies and knowledges
Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations

Paz Araya

Paz ArayaI  am a research fellow at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. I am also currently part of the Chilean Energy Poverty Network, as coordinator of working group: “Energy policies and development models, and the Chilean lab: Núcleo de Estudios Sistémicos Transdisciplinarios (NEST) as part of the “Energy transition” group.

My research interests are: thermal comfort and dwelling practices, Energy Justice and Energy Poverty, just energy transition, global south and decolonization approaches to socio technical transitions and energy policies.

Contact: paz.araya@hu-berlin.de

Find me also at: ResearchGate | IRI THESys

Doctoral Project

I am currently working in the project Living in cold houses, ¿fitting or retrofitting? Practices of thermal comfort and improvement of housing in southern Chile, which aims to understand thermal comfort related social practices for houses under energy poverty in southern Chile. The focus are interrelations among social practices for coping with high or low indoor temperatures, in order to reach thermal comfort, and social practices for infrastructure modification, through thermal retrofit. I am also interested in analyzing how recognizing thermal comfort social practices can impact actions and policy making for the improvement of already built house stock.