Irfan Nugraha

His research explores the intersections of infrastructure, energy, and society in Indonesia, focusing on how power, governance, and local knowledge shape the country’s renewable energy transition. Working within the anthropology of energy, infrastructure, and the future, he examines how electrification and global climate ambitions unfold in postcolonial contexts and across the Global South. 

Irfan’s work seeks to understand both the promises and contradictions of renewable energy transitions in Southeast Asia. Through ethnographic and critical approaches, he studies the lived experiences of communities affected by energy projects, the moral economies underpinning renewable governance, and the emerging possibilities of Anthropocene thinking and technosolutions within shifting climate frontiers.  He holds a Master of Research in Social Anthropology from SOAS University of London, an MSc in Defense Studies (Defense Management) from the Indonesia Defense University (in collaboration with Cranfield University, UK), and a Bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Indonesia. 

Irfan has published works in academic journals and edited volumes on political ecology, conservation, cultural commodification, and indigenous communities. With over a decade of experience as an ethnographer, researcher, and consultant, he has collaborated with government institutions, NGOs, and international organizations. His projects focus on the social and cultural dimensions of low-carbon transitions, the economic and infrastructural impacts of plantation systems and government programs on marginalized communities, and the everyday lives of people living at the frontlines of contemporary capitalism in Indonesia.

• Anthropology of Energy  
• Anthropology of Infrastructure  
• Extractivism and Resource Frontiers  
• Plantationocene  
• Social and Cultural Transformation in the Anthropocene