HE YUAN, YVONNE

PhD Student

Potential Research Title: Governance of Wind as an Atmospheric Resource in China
Research Group: Politics, Economies And Space (PEAS)
Thesis Advisor: Assoc Prof Woon Chih Yuan
Co-advisor: Prof James D Sidaway

Addressing climate change involves intensive exploration, modification, and extraction of atmospheric resources. These natural resources in turn present new configurations of state-society-environment relations, given challenges in determining boundaries, ownership, and proving clear links between causes and effects. And yet, claims of ownership of meteorological resources, legal cases of wind theft, and arguments made in support of intense geoengineering are growing each year. The research thesis intends to explore how such actions made to modify or extract the atmosphere are legitimated, and how the spatial impacts of these activities are first delineated, and justified. With a regional focus on China and Asia more broadly, the research will look at how specific political and cultural conditions shape activities such as renewable energy development, weather modification, and geoengineering.

Yuan (Yvonne) holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University. Upon graduating she worked as an analyst in a boutique investment firm specialising in energy assets based in Manhattan, which subsequently transitioned into a green ammonia project development company. She then obtained a Master in Urban Planning (MUP) from Harvard GSD, where she explored classes on political economy, development, and urban theory. Her master’s thesis was on the state institutional dynamics of mandated wind turbine decommissioning for ecological reasons in China. In her spare time, Yvonne enjoys music, films, learning languages, and going grocery shopping.