From the August 17th-20th, 2026 we were very honored to be able to welcome and host three Decoupling IT advisors, Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University Dame Marilyn Strathern, Professor at UCLA Christopher Kelty, former Associate Professor at the IT-University of Copenhagen Ingmar Lippert. Among other things, the visit was intended to foster exchanges of ideas, discussions of pressing topics and themes in light of the diverse academic profiles that were be present at the meeting, and to provide especially helpful feedback to the DecouplingIT PhD students who are entering the final stages of their theses.

Along with the advisors, the meeting was attended by the DecouplingIT principal investigator professor Steffen Dalsgaard, associate professors Cancan Wang and James Maguire, research fellows Hasib Ahsan and Priscila Santos da Costa, PhD students Christine Borgvold Hansen, Felipe Figueiredo and Vivian Wei Guo. The meeting was also joined by the projects’ current visiting PhD candidate Kei Kato and Postdocs Tim Schütz, Felipe Mammoli, along with PhD candidate Suraiya Luecke from UCLA who is currently also a PhD fellow at the University of Southern Denmark.

At the meeting, the advisors, PhDs and Postdocs presented their ongoing work and the issues that they were encountering. This provided for productive discussions to help the presenters sharpen their arguments, reflect on their work and topic in a new light, or direct their PhD papers and articles towards relevant journals. As the ERC-funded project is entering its final year, the meeting also provided an ideal opportunity to zoom out, reflect upon the project as a whole, review all the progress that has been made, and discuss its direction in the coming year.

As a break from the university meeting rooms and to supplement the academic discussions, we went on excursions to two sites that were of relevance to the DecouplingIT project. On the first day of the meeting, we visited “Production animals. A gallery for the art of the possible“, and were excellently guided by Nathalia Brichet, who is an anthropologist and associate professor at Copenhagen University. The exhibition was both alarming and fascinating and gave needed insights into the mostly unseen world of Danish livestock production and its complex climatic and ethical dilemmas.

On the second day, we headed out to CopenHill, the energy plant that simultaneously functions as a ski-slope, hiking trail, and climbing wall, and contributes to decarbonizing Copenhagen by converting household waste into energy. We enjoyed the view from atop the energy plant, that stands as an example of how large energy infrastructures and technological responses to climate change can look and be established in cities cramped for space while providing appealing outdoor spaces for city visitors and residents.

A huge thanks to all the DecouplingIT advisory board meeting participants and the advisors Marilyn Strathern, Christopher Kelty, and Ingmar Lippert for providing valuable feedback to the Decoupling IT research team. We would also like to thank the IT-University of Copenhagen and the European Research Council (ERC) for making it all possible.