Alison Halford

College student holding her robotic toy at robotics classroom at school

Profile

Researcher on gender, technological literacy and ethics; supporting underserved communities to maximise benefits of new technologies in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

How did you get involved in engineering projects to address climate change? What were your background skills or experience?

I came late to academia and did not anticipate working on engineering projects, but during my PhD, I became involved in the Humanitarian Engineering and Energy for Displacement (HEED) project. Co-creation with refugees taught me that traditional knowledge hierarchies that position researchers as knowers and communities as doers must be dismantled. I took these skills into UKRI-funded EnergyREV, where I worked on smart local energy systems and the role of young people in shaping energy futures. As Co-I on the SET project, I worked with Rwandan rural households to co-create gender responsive solar e-cooking solutions. Working with engineers has built my own capacity to engage with technical design, while my role has also been to understand the capacity of communities to use, adapt and critically question new technologies. This two-way process has been essential to ensuring that climate change interventions create conditions in which all can thrive, as designers, decision-makers and users.

What projects were you invloved in and what did you do?

Alongside my energy research, I have led and contributed to projects that focus on equity, education and identity in STEM. With the British Council, I am PI on Learning 4 All: Disability in Higher Education and STEM, working with staff and students with disabilities to co-create inclusive learning environments in Pakistan. I also co-led Women in STEM programmes in India and Pakistan, including the India Women in Space Leadership initiative, supporting women to build leadership pathways in science and technology. Beyond this, I have worked on projects such as GAP-E, which examined ethics and health care professionals, and I was Co-I on a Nuffield-funded project on race and religion, exploring how identity shapes opportunity and participation for young people. Across these initiatives, I have drawn on feminist and participatory methods to highlight how questions of equity and intersectionality cut across STEM, education and energy.

What did you achieve?

My projects have shown how participatory and feminist approaches can shift both practice and policy. In Rwanda, the SET project evidenced that co-creation as a methodology and method can support households in building energy literacy that leads to . These findings has been taken up by the Rwanda Energy Group and fed into national 2030 clean cooking strategies. EnergyREV advanced responsible innovation in smart local energy systems have produced guidelines on energy and ethics that have shaped policymaking. Beyond energy, Learning for All co-created a tested framework for inclusive STEM that is culturally reflective to better support Pakistan universities. Women in STEM programmes in India and Pakistan created a critical mass of young scholars building leadership capacity in South Asia.

What challenges did you face and how?

In the SET project, we began with art-based methods, but many participants were reluctant to draw, which meant the activities did not capture the richness of their experiences. We pivoted to mapping and storytelling, which proved more effective. The lesson learnt was that participatory tools must be chosen with sensitivity to context, and flexibility is essential when approaches do not resonate. In EnergyREV, the challenge was conceptual: articulating what ‘energy ethics’ meant in practice for smart local energy systems. Building a shared language across disciplines was slow, but it ultimately produced guidance that is now shaping policy. The British Council Learning for All project brought different challenges, as cross-institutional contracting was slow and resource-heavy. Recruitment was also difficult, particularly engaging those with hidden disabilities, and the short timeline limited deeper engagement but this allowed us to understand more about adaptive research practice.

Links