Research

  • What is guiding battery and energy storage development?
  • What does a sustainable battery look like?
  • How does mining factor into the innovation of particular batteries?
  • To what extent are current innovations in battery science driven by or impacting extraction?
  • What values and visions of the world are imbued in a battery?
  • How can mining-affected communities be included in the design of climate solution?
  • What makes a climate solution successful?

You may have arrived here after scanning the QR code at the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit. Thanks for our interest in my research! On this page, I include some relevant details about my poster, my work, our lab, and how we can keep in touch for further research.

My poster

You can access the digital poster at this link. It’s based on work I’ve done over the last six years. I presented a similar talk in a keynote session at the Geology Society of America meeting in 2024, a recording of which you may view here. At the end of this page is a list of citations that were helpful in building the research.

My work

This website has a lot of my work journalistic work, which took place between 2018 and 2024, in Indonesia and in Seattle. I’m now a PhD student in geography at the University of Delaware, where I spend my time researching mining in the energy transition, political ecology, GIS, and climate science.

Our lab

I work in the Klinger Lab, run by Julie Klinger, an associate professor of geography at the University of Delaware. The team there collaborates with a wide range of researchers and organizations in the pursuit of understanding extraction and the social systems that create it.

Get involved in further battery research:

If you’re interested in being interviewed for this work on battery supply chains, send me an email. That way, when we have research structured and ready to go, it will be easy to get rolling. My email: imorse@udel.edu

Citations:

Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Harvard University Press.
Robinson, K. (1986). Stepchildren of progress: The political economy of development in an Indonesian mining town. State University of New York Press.
Sinclair, L. (2024). Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations. Manchester University Press.
Tsing, A. L. (2024). Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press.
Warburton, E. (2023). Resource nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, big business, and the state. Cornell University Press.
Wijaya, T., & Sinclair, L. (n.d.). An EV-fix for Indonesia: The green development-resource nationalist nexus. Environmental Politics, 0(0), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2332129
Winter, M., Barnett, B., & Xu, K. (2018). Before Li Ion Batteries. Chemical Reviews, 118(23), 11433–11456. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.8b00422