Stephanie Hirmer DPhil MPhil BEng

Prof. Stephanie Hirmer is an Associate Professor of Just Energy Systems at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Christ Church. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. With nearly 20 years’ experience in equitable energy access, she specialises in embedding community perspectives into energy infrastructure planning and decision-making to deliver inclusive, context-specific outcomes.

She serves as Research Chair of the flagship FCDO-funded Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) Programme, spearheading its work on gender equality and social inclusion. She also directs the SHIELD programme, supporting Ukraine’s post-war energy sector reconstruction, balancing immediate energy security needs with long-term decarbonisation.

Her research combines advanced technical modelling with participatory methods to ensure energy investments advance national development objectives - such as irrigation for food security - while enabling equitable low-carbon transitions, including green hydrogen, rural electrification, and responsible critical materials extraction. Underpinned by AI- and machine learning-enabled, place-based decision tools, her work supports governments to design infrastructure pathways aligned with local priorities, socio-economic realities, and socio-environmental safeguards.

Her academic work is grounded in extensive practical experience with international organisations, including GIZ (Uganda and Germany), KfW, Dorsch Consulting, and Arup (Middle East and UK), spanning WASH infrastructure in informal settlements, resilience assessments, awareness campaigns, and rural electrification (solar and hydro). She is also Co-founder of Rural Senses, a social enterprise built on the User-Perceived Value (UPV) method developed during her PhD, recognised internationally—including by Google and Microsoft—for its needs-based data collection and AI-enhanced analytics.

Stephanie's particular research interest is on creating value for women and vulnerable groups through energy services, using geospatial modelling, machine learning approaches (e.g., Natural Language Processing (NLP) for analysing qualitative text), and value research (i.e., what is important to people and how can this be accounted for in infrastructure solutions). Her multi-disciplinary and multi-method research is directly working towards Sustainable Development Goals 1 (No Poverty), 5 (Gender Equality), 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and touches on political economy, behavioural science, just transition and development economics.

• Principal Investigator, UKPACT project on the integration of national and sub-national energy planning in Kenya.
• Co-Investigator, FCDO funded programme, Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme looking at the role of energy-enabled high-income economic opportunities (e.g., hydrogen production, waste management) to drive sustainable and economic growth in rural areas in LMICs.
• Principal Investigator, RAEng Frontiers of Engineering for Development, looking at the feasibility and benefits of lithium-ion second-life battery systems for rural schools in East Africa.

• Africa needs context-relevant evidence to shape its clean energy future. Nature Energy (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01152-0
• Opportunities stemming from retrofitting low-resource East African dwellings by introducing passive cooling and daylighting measures. Energy for Sustainable Development, 69 (2022), pp.179-191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2022.06.007
• The Resource Curse in Renewable Energy: A framework for risk assessment. Energy Strategy Reviews 41 (2022): 100841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2022.100841
• The power of language: Exploring values, empowerment dynamics and communication strategies for gender-inclusive energy service design in rural Uganda. Energy Research & Social Science 85 (2022): 102379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102379
• Can electric vehicles be good for Sub-Saharan Africa? Energy Strategy Reviews 38 (2021): 100722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2021.100722
• Data needed to decarbonize paratransit in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nature Sustainability 4, 562–564 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00721-7