News and Events
Water, energy and drought in Southern Alberta
Monday, March 4, 2024.
Alberta just got hit by a triple whammy of water crises. Read Dr. Perić's most recent op-ed in the Calgary Herald to find out more about it. Click here.
Visitors at the exhibit and app launch, Canadian Energy Museum
CEM Executive Director Danni Cailliau (centre left) and Collections Manager Danielle Lane (centre right) with exhibit guests
"Our Oil History" Exhibit and "Skidshack AR" App Launch
Tuesday, February 14, 2024.
Yesterday, on the 77th anniversary of the Leduc oil find, the Canadian Energy Museum and Energy Stories Lab launched our integrated "Our Oil History" exhibit with accompanying "Skidshack AR" app!
We had a fantastic turnout of guests from Devon, Leduc, and the Greater Edmonton area.
We really wanted to rejuvenate the existing exhibit and use different approaches and technologies that could enhance the user's experience of the exhibition. Now, anybody in the world can download this app and place a three-dimensional skid shack in front of them, walk inside and experience the stories of Alberta's oil families through sound, animation and narrative.
Energy Stories Lab graduate students Zahra Jafarzadeh and Gerry Straathof played a huge role in developing the app. Zahra was the animator and Gerry was the developer. The app is very cutting edge. It’s an interactive version of augmented reality that has rarely been used in applications like these.
The lab worked closely with Dr. Rebecca Dolgoy, the curator of Natural Resources and Industrial Technologies at Ingenium in Ottawa, and Danielle Lane, the Canadian Energy Museum’s collections manager.
With this app, we're hoping to contribute first-hand narratives from people who work in our energy systems. That’s a voice we don’t hear. A lot of people talk about Alberta oil and gas workers, but we don't hear a lot from energy workers themselves.
A special thank you to the University of Calgary's Office of the Vice President Research for funding this initiative through both the VPR Catalyst Grant, and the Transdisciplinary Connector Grant!
To read about the launch in UToday, click here.
To read the article about the launch in the Devon Dispatch, click here.
Yekta Tarki's Capstone: Visualizing the Pyrocene
Tuesday, December 12, 2023.
Lab Associate Yekta Tarki presented some of her MFA work-in-progress recently, Visualizing the Pyrocene. Yekta writes: "In my investigation of the human-fire relationship...I translate raw scientific data into my visual language, presenting it alongside paintings and drawings. Intentionally, I incorporate tangible artifacts directly collected from Fort McMurray, functioning as both evidence and a memorial of the fire's impact on the forest and the community."
Enguri Dam
Görkem Aydemir-Kundakcı
The Electric Zone
Monday, November 27, 2023.
Post-doc Görkem Aydemir-Kundakcı’s latest piece was just published in Anthropology News’ special issue on “Energy”. In this special issue, she writes about “The Electric Zone” and the contested space that the Enguri Dam plays in the Georgia-Abkhazia borderlands. She writes eloquently:
“The Engurhesi complex has generated a distinct field around the river, one that is perceived as transcending politics and immune to the uncertainties of the conflict. Since the war, it has offered predictability to its employees in a zone of protracted violence and precarity. Whatever the future of the conflict, Engurhesi employees think the dam will continue to work—after all, both sides need the electricity it produces. Bakuri explained that “Engurhesi reconciled people who hated each other, who could not stand being in the same room. I never think that I am working for Georgia, Abkhazia, or Russia. I work for the people… I have worked here for 30 years. I will probably live here forever. When I die, they will probably bury me here.” For people who work at the power station, the dam is outside the contours of the future that the conflict continuously disrupts; it is a place that brings opposing views and people together… Engurhesi’s electricity, however, becomes controversial and divisive as it enters homes through an infrastructural network that has barely endured a regime change, the war, an ongoing conflict, and lack of maintenance. Rather than the quiet, efficient ease of electricity flows in many other settings, Engurhesi’s electricity charges war-torn homes with continuous anxiety, and cross-border lives with resentment.”
Congratulations, Görkem!
Read more by clicking here.
Does Alberta need an orphan reactor problem as well?
Monday, October 2, 2023.
At the World Petroleum Congress in September, the Government of Alberta announced new funding into a study on the potential usage of small modular reactors (SMRs) to power oil sands operations. Lab co-director, Sabrina Perić wrote an op-ed about nuclear power in Alberta, which was published a few days ago in the Calgary Herald. To read the op-ed, please click here.
SkidShack AR is now on the App Store
Tuesday, July 18, 2023.
Have you ever wanted to walk around inside a typical family home from a 1940s oil field? Do you want to hear stories about the Leduc no 1 oil field that reveal hidden stories about women and families?
In collaboration with the Canadian Energy Museum, we are happy to announce that our prototype SkidShack AR app is available for download on Apple devices. Android version will be available soon!
Are you interested in the power and possibilities of visual research?
Friday, June 30, 2023.
Drs. Leblanc, Perić and Aydemir-Kundakcı will be organizing a new interdisciplinary working group at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities in 2023-2024: Visualizing, Digitizing, Making New Stories.
In the Visualizing, Digitizing, Making New Stories working group, we will examine and interrogate the role that visual media plays in humanities and social science research, their ability to embody and represent expert knowledge, as well as their ability to connect with audiences through storytelling. In this group, we will ask:
1) what kinds of visual research should we pursue?
2) what kind of visual forms lend themselves to public communication and how can we tell compelling stories?
3) what should be the role of institutions (such as universities and museums) in advancing new forms of visual research aimed specifically at mobilizing knowledge amongst the public?
4) what novel technologies and artforms could play a role in connecting seemingly disconnected Canadian audiences? and
5) what are the equity, diversity and inclusion challenges with using visual research more intensively?
In 2023-2024, our working group will bring together faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, artists, curators as well as leaders from public institutions to engage these questions through a speakers’ series, workshops and a multi-day charette. Our work will involve both research and research creation practices.
We welcome anyone who is interested to participate! If you have any questions, or would like to join us, please email one of the three co-conveners:
jrleblanc@calgary.ca or speric@ucalgary.ca or gorkem.aydemirkundak@ucalgary.ca
Towards Net Zero in Agriculture?
Monday, June 19, 2023.
At the Energy Stories Lab, we think that some of Canada's most interesting energy stories are coming from the field of agriculture! When most people think of energy, agriculture doesn't necessarily come to mind first. We want to share some of the work-in-progress at our lab!
Did you know? 10% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are from crop and livestock production, excluding emissions from the use of fossil fuels or from fertilizer production (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2023).
Dr. Perić (co-PI) and Dr. Bettini are working with Dr. David Lobb (PI, UManitoba) on a large interdisciplinary project that will make substantive progress towards net-zero emissions for agriculture in Canada. This project proposes to bring together the challenges of soil erosion and carbon sequestration in order to better understand how Canada can both achieve its climate change goals, and also create sustainable agricultural systems. Canada’s agriculture sector plays an important role in the commitment to combat climate change, especially through AAFC’s forthcoming Sustainable Agriculture Strategy (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2023), which will contribute to the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (2021). The path towards net-zero and meaningfully reducing GHG emissions includes both the innovation of new techniques, technologies, and also understanding the economic, social and cultural pathways to net zero.
As as a part of the Energy Stories Lab mandate, Drs. Perić and Bettini will be working with farmers across Canada to document how they work innovatively to improve carbon sequestration and further energy transitions. This project will be our submission to the joint NSERC-SSHRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative Grant Competition.
As a part of this competition, we were already awarded Preparatory Funding by NSERC-SSHRC to prepare the final submission. Congratulations!!
Canada's Pathway to 2030
canada.ca
Zahra Jafarzadeh awarded graduate scholarship
Friday, May 26, 2023.
Today, MFA candidate Zahra Jafarzadeh was awarded an Alberta Foundation for the Arts Graduate Scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year. Zahra is an artist interested in visual storytelling about social and environmental phenomena centring on women. As a part of her MFA project, she will be re-narrating women's work in the oil industry through a series of 2D animation projects. Congratulations, Zahra!
Visit the Lab's new Instagram page
Friday, May 19, 2023.
The Energy Stories Lab has a new IG account: @energystorieslab
Follow us on Instagram to catch up on the latest news about our projects, exciting new digital stories, interactive experiences. You can watch research in progress - in the lab, in the archives and most importantly of all, in communities all over Alberta.
We're back from McMurray
Thursday, May 18, 2023.
Last week, we travelled to Fort McMurray to meet with some community members and organizations, to work with the amazing women of Wood Buffalo on recording some of their life histories, and to practice 3D scanning "Cyrus", the Bucyrus Erie bucketwheel excavator at the Oil Sands Discovery Centre. We also had an opportunity to explore the former site of the Abasand Oil Plant...an interesting hike that yielded a new avenue. But more on that in coming months!
Read Kiersten Gillis' blog piece!
Tuesday, April 25, 2023.
The Energy Stories Lab's Undergraduate Associate, Kiersten Gillis, has just published a blog piece about her experience working on the Storying the Oil Sands project for the Ingenium Channel, the blog site for Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation. Kiersten's discusses what it is like to contribute, as a community member, to a community's oral history. She eloquently writes: "Ultimately, the oral histories of RMWB residents are a reminder of the importance of community, and that the identity of a region that is tied to resource extraction is more complex than it might appear at first glance to outsiders. In taking this bottom-up approach to telling and sharing stories about the oil sands, I hope that the people of my region will feel heard, and that others will not overlook how we have contributed to the history of Canada." Congratulations on the great blog piece, Kiersten!
Gerry Straathof awarded Doctoral Scholarship
Monday, April 24, 2023.
PhD Candidate Gerry Straathof was just awarded a Doctoral Entrance Scholarship from the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Calgary. Gerry's doctoral project focuses on the legacy of industrial heritage in Alberta, particularly looking at how researchers and communities can work collaboratively to create digital heritage resources that can widen access to industrial sites and create more complex public narratives about the province's energy history. Congratulations, Gerry!
We're moving!
Monday, April 17, 2023.
Thanks to the Canada Foundation for Innovation's John Evans Leaders Fund, the Energy Stories Lab has been able to secure funding for its Mobile Energy Storytelling Kits, which are on order! We are slowly moving into our new space - Earth Sciences 826. We are very appropriately right next to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology's Digital Storytelling Lab! If you'd like to arrange a visit, send us an email to: energystorieslab@ucalgary.ca!