Meet BTECH's new postdoc, Nick Fitzpatrick 🪃
Read more about his work areas, professional background, hobbies and more.
Why did you choose to work at BTECH?
I chose to work at BTECH because of the world-class interdisciplinary team within the Centre for Energy Technologies (CET). Our research group has three ERC projects – GENIE, UPTAKE, ELEVATE – that extend across various topics that tickle my fancy.
What is your area of work?
My research focuses on the political economy of sustainability transitions, in particular the context, actors and processes with the spaces concerned with carbon dioxide removal (CDR), negative emission technologies (NETs) and nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
What is your background?
I have a background in the natural sciences, namely environmental sciences and geology. I hold a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of Wollongong (Australia) and an MSc in Geology (Ice and Climate) from Aarhus University (Denmark). However, during my PhD degree, I switched to the social sciences to study ecological economics and degrowth at NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal). Here, my research focused on untangling relationships among policy, power and practice to realise the revolutionary potential of sustainability transitions (i.e., how to organise for degrowth). During this research, I also worked as a speechwriter for Pope Francis on environmental justice at the Vatican for one year, and I have run numerous summer schools on ecological economics and degrowth in Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
Would you like to tell a bit about yourself, your family and your hobbies?
I was born and raised in the settler colony known as Australia. I grew up in a small rural town 400 km west of Sydney, where my parents worked in administration and agriculture. I was the first person in my family to finish high school, study at a university or travel overseas. Since then, I have spent most of my adult years living abroad in Canada, Denmark, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. Aside from wage labour, I enjoy watching and playing sport, mostly football (Manchester United, AGF), cycling, running, ping pong and padel. I also enjoy reading, writing, travelling by train/bus and hiking.