Laura Watts is a writer, poet, and ethnographer of futures, whose research explores the effect of ‘edge’ landscapes on how the future is imagined and made. For the past decade she has collaborated in the Orkney islands, Scotland, on how energy futures can be made otherwise.

Laura is an Interdisciplinary Senior Lecturer in Energy & Society, in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research is located at the intersection of Science & Technology Studies (STS); Anthropology of Energy; Ethnography of Futures; Marine Renewable Energy; Writing Methods; Speculative Fabulation; Island Studies; Infrastructure Studies; Energy Futures; Energy & Data Convergence.

Her latest book is “Energy at the End of the World: an Orkney Islands Saga” (MIT Press). She is co-author of “Ebban an’ Flowan”, a poetic primer to marine energy, and in 2017 she won the International Cultural Innovation Prize with the Reconstrained Design Group for a community-built energy storage device designed from scrap.