Paul Munro

Dr Paul Munro is a Senior Research Fellow in Human Geography within the Environment and Society Group at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. He has an established research record in the fields of political ecology and environmental history, and has written extensively on forest governance and energy justice, with a particular geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, including the monograph: Colonial Seeds in Africa Soil: a critical history of forest conservation in Sierra Leone (Berghahn Books, 2020).
His current research is focused on the changing geographies of energy poverty. How the emergence of new technologies (e.g., small-scale photovoltaic power), new trade dynamics and financial platforms (e.g., mobile money) have reshaped how people realise their energy needs in poor rural settings. He is currently engaged in research in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Vanuatu. This research is being funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) grant, through his Scientia Research Fellowship at UNSW, and through a Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) Fellowship at the University of Ghana. He is also the Environmental and Society Undergraduate program convenor at UNSW, overseeing the university’s Environmental Humanities and Geographical Studies majors.