NRF Women's Month 2026: Prof Roula Inglesi-Lotz

Every research journey starts with a question. This Women’s Month, the NRF celebrates women driven by curiosity — researchers whose questions, ideas and determination are expanding our understanding of the world around us. From exploring the unknown to deepening our existing knowledge, curiosity remains at the heart of discovery. We thank all participants for sharing their stories with us.

Prof Roula Inglesi-Lotz is a Professor of Economics at the University of Pretoria. She received support from the NRF during her postgraduate studies, and currently holds an NRF C-rating as well as the DSTI-NRF South African Research Chair in Just Energy Transition. Her research examines how energy systems affect economies and people’s everyday lives.

How has your affiliation with the NRF impacted your studies/career?

My relationship with the NRF has developed through several important stages of my career. As a student, I received funding from the NRF for my Master’s and Doctoral studies. Currently, I am an NRF C1-rated (established) researcher, and I have received support through the NRF Competitive Programme for Unrated and Rated Researchers. I am also the holder of the DSTI-NRF South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Just Energy Transition at the University of Pretoria.

NRF support has provided far more than research funding. It has given me the space and institutional platform to build sustained research programmes, collaborate across disciplines and countries, support postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and connect academic research with the policy questions facing South Africa.

The Research Chair, in particular, has enabled me to bring together work on energy systems, economic development, skills, employment, affordability and energy justice. It has also allowed me to develop a team and create opportunities for emerging researchers rather than approaching research only as a series of individual projects. For me, research has its greatest value when it opens opportunities for others and helps society ask better questions.

These opportunities have strengthened both the reach and the relevance of my work. They have allowed me to contribute evidence to national and international discussions while remaining closely engaged with the lived realities of South Africans. The NRF’s support has therefore shaped not only what I research, but also the kind of researcher and mentor I have become.

What is your research focus or area of expertise?

My research examines how energy systems affect economies and people’s everyday lives. Electricity is not simply a technical service. Its price, reliability and availability influence whether households can meet their needs, students can study, businesses can operate, and economies can grow and create employment.

I use economic data and analytical tools to study electricity demand, energy prices, renewable energy, energy poverty, environmental policy, and the transition to lower-carbon economies. A central question in my current work is how South Africa and other countries can move towards cleaner energy without deepening inequality or leaving workers, communities and vulnerable households behind.

This is why the idea of a just energy transition is so important to me. The transition cannot be assessed only by counting new technologies or renewable-energy capacity. We must also ask who pays, who benefits, whose jobs and communities are affected, whether people have the skills to participate in new opportunities, and whether energy remains affordable and reliable. My research aims to make those trade-offs visible and provide evidence that can support better policy decisions.

What sparked your curiosity about your field of research, and what continues to keep you curious?

My curiosity about energy economics began with a very practical experience.

In 2008, when South Africa experienced its first major period of power disruptions (later on, load-shedding) and electricity prices were being restructured, I was a Master’s student working on my thesis. Battery back-up and rooftop solar were not realistic options for me and were not widely commercialised at the time. Whenever the power was cut, my work stopped. Electricity was suddenly not an abstract variable in an economic model; it directly determined whether I could study and make progress.

At the same time, I noticed something that intrigued me as a young economist. Studies of the determinants of electricity demand in South Africa did not adequately consider the role of electricity prices. That gap prompted a simple but important question: how could we understand electricity demand without properly examining the price people and firms were asked to pay? This combination of lived experience and an unanswered economic question set me on my research path.

What keeps me curious is that energy questions never stand still. Technologies change, prices change, policies change, and the effects are not the same for every household, business, worker or country. Each proposed solution creates new questions about affordability, behaviour, fairness, institutions and development. I remain curious about how we can design an energy transition that works not only technically, but also economically and socially.

What is one thing you wish more people understood about your field of research?

I wish more people understood that an energy transition is not only a technological change. Replacing one source of electricity with another does not automatically make a transition fair, affordable or successful.

Energy decisions have distributional consequences: they create benefits and costs that are shared unevenly across households, workers, regions and generations. A policy may look efficient at national level while placing an unbearable burden on a low-income household or a community whose livelihoods depend on an existing industry.

Conversely, delaying change also carries serious economic, environmental and social costs.

A successful transition therefore requires us to consider people and institutions alongside infrastructure and technology. We need reliable evidence, capable institutions, appropriate skills, meaningful participation, and policies that recognise different starting points. There is no single energy transition that can simply be copied from one country to another; context matters.

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