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Who keeps the lights on? The political economy of network energy in Britain, 1950-2023

12 March 2025, 4:00 pm–5:00 pm

12.03

This event is open to IIPP's students and faculty only

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All | UCL students

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

IIPP Comms

Location

IIPP Seminar Room
11 Montague St
London
WC1B 5BP
United Kingdom

 

Hosted at UCL IIPP on Wednesday 12th March 2025 16:00 (GMT) for a talk by Arthur Downing.

Read more about IIPP 2024-25 Enrichment Lectures

 

About the Speakers

Arthur Downing

Director of Strategy and economic historian at Octopus Energy

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Arthur Downing is an economic historian working on a book on the history of the energy sector for Verso Press. He holds a Dphil in Economic History from Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of All Souls College. He then worked at the Boston Consulting Group, National Grid, National Gas Transmission. He is currently a Director of Strategy at Octopus Energy. In his spare time he blogs about enegy history http://energyworks.substack.com/

 

More about Arthur Downing

Francesca Edgerton

Policy Fellow at IIPP, UCL

Francesca Edgerton
Francesca Edgerton is a Deputy Head of Policy working on industrial policy in the director’s office. She supports Professor Mazzucato in the crafting and implementation of strategies that support green industrial policy around the world. This includes policy development, shaping academic narratives, desk and stakeholder research, project management and implementation. She leads on providing content-specific support on key industrial policy developments globally, focusing on Brazil, Mexico, the UK and the USA, as well as the green transition, school meals, AI and semiconductors. She works directly with government, civil society, and academic stakeholders in each of these contexts to achieve policy goals on green industrial strategy.

Francesca worked on the intersection of tech and democracy for two years at the Open Society Foundations, focusing on AI industrial strategy and global tech governance. At OSF, she focused on achieving mission orientated goals through grant making, advocacy and narrative change in areas such as tech anti-monopoly organising and global big tech accountability, as well as through supporting independent media. Francesca previously worked as a researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she authored reports and conducted research on media viability, mis/disinformation and media capture for a variety of policy and academic audiences.
Prior to this, Francesca worked in independent film distribution in Latin America, where she led on business development in Mexico and the Southern Cone.

She is currently also pursuing an AHRC funded part-time PhD on the history of exile in 20th century Mexico at UCL. Francesca did her master’s in Latin American History at New York University, and her undergrad in History at the University of Edinburgh.  More about Francesca Edgerton