Irem Inal (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Political Economy.
Her ongoing dissertation research explores the public participation processes in development of wind energy infrastructure in rural US, with an emphasis on regions in transition from fossil fuel based economies. For this work, she zooms in on stakeholders and their various claims around energy projects and the role of sub-national governments in constraining, shaping and representing economic and environmental interests of communities.
In another recent project in collaboration with EnLab scholars, she focused on how coalitions of different interest groups have influenced the content and success of specific energy policies in Colorado, Illinois and New York.
For her master's, she researched the factors behind consolidation and organizational change in the credit union industry in the US between 1990 and 2020.
Before moving to the Bay Area for graduate school, she lived in Istanbul, Turkey where she double-majored in Sociology and Economics at Bogazici University.
