Dr Rebecca Wright

My research has centred on cultural approaches to energy in twentieth century America and more recently Britain. My first book Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb (Johns Hopkins: 2025) explores the birth of an ‘energy consciousness’ in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to focusing on the role of conceptual frameworks in defining energy, I have also looked to the history of emotions, and more recently the medical humanities to better understand our relationship to energy in the psat. I have published widely in this area in journals including, Environmental History, the Journal for Canadian History, the History Workshop Journal, and Environment, Space, Place.

I also co-authored (with Hiroki Shin and Frank Trentmann), Power, Energy and International Cooperation: A History of the World Energy Council. (Munich: Oekom Verlag, 2019) which examined the role of experts, expertise and international organisations in shaping international policy relating to energy.

My current research is examining histories of heat and fuel poverty. In 2024 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust CDA for the project “Carbon Bodies; Warmth and Fuelling Health in Britain, 1918 to 2022.” Focussing on the most carbon intensive area of everyday health, heating, “Carbon Bodies” examines how health became increasingly carbon intensive over the twentieth century. This process was never even and the project will uncover a history of fuel poverty, and the role that experts, community groups, and activists had in redefining heat as a matter for social policy. In doing so, the project seeks to provide a historical context to better understand the challenges of decarbonising the body at a time of environmental crisis and energy insecurity.

Alongside research in energy, I am also interested in the application and impacts of digital methods within humanities and historical research.

At Northumbria, I teach environmental history across the American Studies and History curriculum. I also lead the Level 5 experiential learning module HI5054 “Fieldnotes: Politics and Policy Making in Place” centred around teaching environmental history in the field.

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• 'Ebbs and Floods': William James's Energy Ethics, Wright, R. 1 Mar 2025, Energy's History: Toward a Global Canon, Stanford, Stanford University Press
• Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb, Wright, R. 29 Apr 2025
• 68 Degrees: New york city’s residential heat and hot water code as an invisible energy policy, Wright, R. 1 Oct 2023, In: Environmental History
• Transforming innovation for decarbonisation? Insights from combining complex systems and social practice perspectives, Labanca, N., Pereira, Â., Watson, M., Krieger, K., Padovan, D., Watts, L., Moezzi, M., Wallenborn, G., Wright, R., Laes, E., Fath, B., Ruzzenenti, F., De Moor, T., Bauwens, T., Mehta, L. 1 Jul 2020, In: Energy Research and Social Science
• Power, Energy and International Cooperation: A History of the World Energy Council, Wright, R., Shin, H., Trentmann, F. 1 Aug 2019
• Typewriting Mass Observation Online: Media Imprints on the Digital Archive, Wright, R. 1 Apr 2019, In: History Workshop Journal
• Mass Observation and the Emotional Energy Consumer, Wright, R. 2018, In: Canadian Journal of History
• The Economics of Aesthetics at Southern California Edison, Wright, R. 1 Aug 2018, In: Environment, Space, Place
• The Social Life of Energy Futures: Experts, Consumers, and Demand in the Golden Age of Modernisation, Wright, R., Trentmann, F. 4 Oct 2018, Work in Progress, Munich, Oekom Verlag
• Connecting Past, Present and Future, Wright, R., Pooley, C. Apr 2017, In: Interactions

• Nicholas Stromberg Start Date: 01/10/2025
• Nicholas Stromberg Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025

• Humanities PhD December 30 2015
• MA July 01 2010
• BA (Hons) October 30 2009