Olufolahan Osunmuyiwa

Olufolahan Osunmuyiwa is a Research Fellow at The Institute for Management of Innovation and Technology (IMIT) and is associated as a post-doctoral researcher at Chalmers. Olufolahan’s research is about sustainable electrification, energy sufficiency and societal transformation in low- and middle-income countries. She conducts user-centric and citizen-led research on energy transitions and energy efficiency in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Her research explores how disruptive energy technologies, specifically, small scale renewable electricity systems and new modes of electricity demand management become embedded at the household to the community level. She further explores the transformative nature of such sustainable energy systems and how their provision impacts socio-economic, class, power and gender dynamics within local contexts.

Her current work is focused on the integration of science-user-policy interface to promote socially inclusive energy systems that spur entrepreneurial outcomes beyond the local to the global level. Central to this work is the concept of energy entrepreneurship, energy flexibility capital, resource governance and power.

Olufolahan has ample empirical experience with the electricity sector in East, West and Southern Africa and has conducted numerous monitoring and evaluation exercises for NGOs and donor foundations on energy access projects in these regions. Also, she has conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research on energy demand management and worked with policy and utility stakeholders to design demand flexibility experiments and strategies for energy systems in India.

Her background is in social science, energy and environmental policy and her research interests and outputs lie at the intersection between engineering and social development. Theoretically, her work contributes to debates in the fields of energy for development (E4D), science and technology, societal innovations, feminist theory, energy-entrepreneurship and power theory.

Olu currently has close collaborations with researchers at the Urban Energy Group, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. There she works with Dr David Jenkins and Dr Andrew Peacock.