Environmental Internship Program - 2023 Booklet

Kat McLaughlin ’25
ANTHROPOLOGY
Certificate: Environmental Studies
INNOVATION AND A
NEW ENERGY FUTURE
PROJECT TITLE
Equitable Energy
Transitions: Investigating
Community Response
ORGANIZATION(S)
Behavioral Science for
Policy Lab, Princeton
University
LOCATION(S)
Princeton, New Jersey
MENTOR(S)
Elke Weber,
Gerhard R. Andlinger
Professor in Energy and
the Environment,
Professor of Psychology
and the School of Public
and International Affairs,
Princeton University;
Holly Caggiano, Assistant
Professor in Planning,
University of British
Columbia; Sara
Constantino, Visiting
Research Scholar,
School of Public and
International Affairs,
Princeton University
I investigated the community response to
solar development in southern Pennsylvania.
My goal was to use a qualitative approach to
understand the diverse perspectives of local
community members living or working close to
solar projects. This work will provide insight into
how communities will impact and be impacted
at the local level by the necessary large-scale
transition to net-zero. This perspective is vital
for the implementation of an equitable energy
transition. For this project, I transcribed and
summarized scoping interviews to help drive
and focus future research. I also sent out 1,000
mailers to recruit more interview participants,
and I began preliminary thematic analysis,
a reflexive and inductive method to identify
patterns from our interviews. Thanks to my
incredible mentors, I learned a lot about
qualitative approaches to research, especially
within the scope of behavioral science and
psychology. I look forward to implementing
these new perspectives and skills in future
anthropological projects.
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