This week we're joined by Mike Fell, energy researcher at UCL, amongst many other things.

We've been following Mike's work for a while, (mainly because the pump:chic work is really interesting to us) and when we clocked he's co-authored this paper about realist approaches in energy research we saw an opportunity to bring him onto the podcast.

Realist approaches ask not just ‘what works?’, but ‘for whom does it work, under what circumstances, and why?', all good subjects for enquiry in any project.

It's much less academic than it might sound. We think it's a really valuable way of approaching research so we wanted to talk with Mike about how he's been using the approach and give us a chance to promote it all to our listeners.

We also want folk to check out all the other interesting things he's up to as well. Check the links below.

Notes from the show

• Realist approaches in energy research, by Mike Fell, Katy Roelich, and Lucie Middlemiss (this link should be fine but if anyone has any problems do let us know)
• The Baking Forecast Twitter account
• ShouldIBake.com
• The power of getting real(ist), a blog about the paper, for if you want to dip in quickly
• The pump:chic website 
• Mike's pump:chic glamour photography Instagram account
• Nathan Gambling's LinkedIn post that we mention
• Mike's blog about Airbnb: Peer-to-peer energy: what can we learn from more than a decade of Airbnb
• Mike's blog about energy access: How fair is flexibility?
• Mike's website for his art projects, like the Mechanical Choir that we mentioned

Retrofit Reimagined
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We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

• Jeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - [email protected]; Everything is User Experience
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• Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon Upfront
• Join ACAN
• Join the AECB 
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• Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronising way)

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