Masterclass with Dr. Cara Daggett
Power Forever?

December 8, 2026 10:00 – 17:00 hrs
Maastricht University 

With this event, the Centre for Gender & Diversity (Maastricht University) invites dr. Cara Daggett for a masterclass and Vectors for Change lecture at Maastricht University. With her ground-breaking work on petromasculinity and her focus on energy transition, its relation to gender and sexuality, and its aim of foregrounding justice, dr. Daggett’s work is a highly relevant and inspiring intervention that will be of interests to researchers, activists and students.
The masterclass will be a closed event for master, research master and PhD-students whose research relates to the topics.

The CGD Vectors for Change lectures are a lecture series that invites speakers from near and far to share their unique analyses of intersecting vectors of power differentials. The series aims to showcase how research can become a vector of change – to not only describe and explain social issues, but to involve public partners and intervene for the sake of social justice. The lecture will be open for all staff, students and activists who are interested to attend.

Dr. Cara New Daggett is a researcher and writer interested in the politics of energy and climate crisis. She is currently a fellow at the Futures of Sustainability Center at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and an affiliate faculty member at Virginia Tech, where she researches feminist political ecology.
She is a co-editor of the Critical Energy Studies book series at MIT Press, and a co-editor of the journal Energy Humanities. She authored The Birth of Energy: Fossil fuels, thermodynamics, and the politics of work, developed the concept of petro-masculinity, and co-authored a framework for feminist energy systems. Cara is devoted to energy futures that leave behind the extractive model of production and exhaustion, and instead foreground justice, beauty and pleasure.

Masterclass: Power Forever?
Time: 10.00-12.30h
Location: Maastricht University
In this masterclass, students will be invited to share their research as it related to the intersecting themes of ecology, energy, gender, (petro-)masculinity, queer ecology and ecofeminism. The masterclass will build on Cara Dagget’s work on petro-masculinity, to invite reflection, exchange theoretical and methodological perspectives, and provide inspiration for researching these topics.
Students will prepare by reading 2 or 3 sources provided by dr. Daggett and are expected to actively engage in discussion during the masterclass.

Details Masterclass:

  • Date & Time: Tuesday, 8 December, 10.00-12.30h
  • Number of participants: 15
  • Registration: fill in this form (link)
  • Credits: RMA and PhD students can receive 1 ECTS by completing the required reading and participating in the Masterclass. Attendance at the lecture is encouraged.

CGD Vectors for Change Lecture: ‘Power Forever? On the relationship between fascism, energy, and patriarchy’

Time: 15.30-17.00h
Location: Maastricht University
This talk interrogates the centrality of patriarchal domination to the politics of energy expansion. The importance of gender and sexuality to energy politics is evident in far-right movements. Fossil fascist movements express ‘petromasculinities’ that celebrate their entitlement to the work of women, nature, and colonial land and labor.
At the same time, large-scale solar and wind power plans are taking shape that also have a patriarchal and colonial relationship to nature, more often expressed through ‘ecomodern masculinities’ that rely upon technological innovation to sustain capitalist growth. Ecomodern masculinities are expressed in both fascist and liberal democratic states. A historical perspective shows these modes of (energy) governance and world-building are deeply entangled. The alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley in the U.S. – the merger of ‘tech bros’ and ‘trad bros’ – reflects this longer relationship, as do the ‘wind masculinities’ and ‘solar masculinities’ taking shape in the Hindutva movement in India, or the Erdoğan regime in Turkey.
In this talk, I will explore the relationship between ecomodern and fossil fascist energy politics through a critical ecofeminist perspective.