This roundtable brings together emerging and established voices for a fast-paced "lightning-round" conversation on the most promising new directions in energy history today. The speakers' research spans a range of regions, methodological approaches, and time periods – from China to the United States, the history of science to labor history, the early modern to the near future.

Together, panelists will explore some of the liveliest debates in the field today. In what ways is energy history incorporating new actors and issues, from the machinations of the developmental state in East and South Asia to the racialized bodies of women in the household and beyond in the North Atlantic? What are the possibilities and pitfalls of drawing on Earth System science, or of centering new methods of digital mapping, data mining, or of multi-scholar collaboration? How should historians understand the abandoned futures past of alternative energy programs that failed and forms of environmental damage that were invisible to contemporaries? How do we write histories of energy that deepen our understanding of present threats without imposing anachronistic, reductionist, or deterministic interpretations on past energy regimes? To what extent can and should our pedagogy reflect such questions? We envisage the discussion of these questions appealing to a broad audience of scholars in environmental history, the history of technology, economic history, world history, and more.