Expertise

History of Electrification, Human Geography, Political Economy, History of Development, Critical Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Ethnography of Infrastructure, Physics, Energy Engineering

Biography

I am a human geographer with a background in physics interested in the links between energy infrastructure, political economy, and everyday life. My work explores how infrastructure like electric grids do more than deliver services—their entangled with subjectivities, social relations, and material conditions. Situating my research within global electrification efforts, like “modern energy for all” and “electrify everything” movements, I interrogate how and why various assumptions within electricity development dominate the discourse and affect policy and technology. Specifically, I am interested in the relational processes that (re)produce socio-material conditions within electricity services characterized by erratic and expensive access. While most of my work to date has been in Tanzania, I am currently  conducting historical and comparative research across grid systems in the US (in the Bay Area) and Ghana (in Accra). 

Methodologically, I employ both quantitative and qualitative methods. My main research activities include exploratory hypothesis generating, interviews and grounded theory, instrumentation and survey design, statistical analysis, and archeological and genealogical methods (following Foucault). I use ethnography to help explore the myriad of ways meanings get constructed and experienced. When possible, I couple ethnographic work with systematic observations and measurements to inform my understanding of how day-to-day experiences relate to broader patterns, and how those patterns and experiences get translated over space and time. Guided by a rigorous understanding of electric power systems and critical social theory, my research contributes to the political economy of energy development, Science and Technology Studies, and the ethnographies and everyday histories of infrastructure. 

Prior to joining Temple University, I was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, working with sociologist David Pellow. I earned my PhD in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in the Program in Critical Theory and hold a BS in Engineering Physics from University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign.

Website

Selected Publications

• Montañés, C. C., Ray, I., & Jacome, V. (2025). Out of sight, out of mind? How electricity (un) reliability shapes residential energy transitions. Applied Energy, 385, 125497.
• Jacome, V. (2024). “Killing Complaints with Courtesy”: The Role of Relationship Building in the Success of the Early US Central Power Stations (1890–1938). Enterprise & Society, 1-24.
• Jacome, V., Klugman, N., Wolfram, C., Grunfeld, B., Callaway, D., & Ray, I. (2019). Power quality and modern energy for all. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(33), 16308-16313.
• Jacome, V., & Ray, I. (2018). The prepaid electric meter: Rights, relationships and reification in Unguja, Tanzania. World Development, 105, 262-272.

Courses Taught

• Politics and Poetics of Energy Infrastructure
• Geography of Natural Resources
• Energy, Resources, and Society
• Environment and Development
• Political Economy of Energy Development