William Westgard-Cruice is a geographer and political economist focused on the dynamics of capitalist industrialization, labor process change, and the political economy of the global energy industry.
William’s work spans several branches of the discipline of geography, particularly nature-society geography, political-economic geography, and labor geography. Methodologically, his research is influenced by heterodox approaches to the critique of political economy, particularly the work of researchers associated with the Centro para la Investigacíon como Crítica Práctica (CICP).
William is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Wind and Energy Systems at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). At DTU Wind, he analyses the growth and transformation of the global wind energy industry.
Before coming to DTU, William completed his doctorate in geography at the Clark University Graduate School of Geography (Massachusetts, USA), with extended research visits at the University of Hamburg, the University of Bremen, and the City University of New York (CUNY). Previously, William studied international macroeconomics, human geography, and global economic history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Main research interests:
geographies of capitalist industrialization
political economy of energy system transformation
labor process theory and labor regime research
methodological topics in the critique of political economy
(theory of value, accumulation, and crisis; dialectical method)
Current research:
My empirical research is focused on the following topics and problems:
First, I am examining the changing spatial division of labor in the offshore wind energy industry, with attention to the dynamics of uneven geographical development in coastal regions in Europe and North America.
Second, I am analyzing the changing spatial division of labor and the development of the renewable energy industry in South Africa. This work is financed by the DANIDA Fellowship Centre (DFC) as part of the project “Overcoming acceleration challenges in the South African energy transition (ACCELERATE).”
Third, I am developing a comparative political-economic account of ‘green industrial policy’ in Germany, Denmark, South Africa, and the United States, analyzing the economic, political, and ideological forms mediating the growth of the renewable energy industry.
Please feel free to write me an email at wiwe [at] dtu.dk