Kathryn Milun
Kathryn Milun is a community-engaged scholar, writer, and energy democracy activist whose work has long been rooted in how communities locally, sustainably, and equitably govern “commons” –shared gifts of nature (air, water, wildlife, food) and community. As a legal anthropologist, Dr. Milun collaborates with community partners to prototype community trust ownership as a legal and economic strategy for community wealth building. She founded and directs the Solar Commons Project (SCP) at the University of Minnesota’s Design Center.
Solar Commons prototypes show how shared-equity, community trust ownership of solar energy can harness the sun’s common wealth to create a twenty-year revenue stream supporting long term reparative justice work in urban, rural and Indigenous communities. The aim of the SCP prototypes is to generate free, open source tools—simple legal templates and a digital peer-governance dashboard—that empower underserved communities to partner with a nearby solar host to share the solar savings on the host’s electric bill. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s (RMI) found that an appropriate technology, community-scale of 500kW exists as the optimal size for SC projects.
Dr. Milun’s work on the Solar Commons Project has been honored with a US Green Building Council Legacy Project Award and, in 2022, with a Sunny Award for Equitable Community Solar from the US Department of Energy. In 2023, Dr. Milun co-mentored University of Minnesota seniors in engineering and anthropology who formed a “Solar Commons Team” in the US District Solar Cup Collegiate Design Competition and won first place nationally for their design of how the University of Minnesota can share the benefits of their rooftop solar arrays with a local Indigenous community in support of their long term food sovereignty work.
As an interdisciplinary research social scientist based in the Anthropology Program at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Dr. Milun teaches courses on public anthropology, the anthropology of energy, commons design, the anthropology of law and social theory. Dr. Milun works with faculty and students engaged in research on social-ecological justice and community economies. She is a former fellow of the Tomales Bay Institute & On the Commons, think/do tanks focused on commons strategy-building. She is a fellow at the Minnesota Design Center and the Institute on the Environment; she is also an affiliated faculty member of the University of Minnesota Law School. Kathryn began her academic career in the Anthropology Department of Rice University.
Milun has published two academic books on commons: Pathologies of Modern Space (2006 Routledge)–a cultural history of the modern urban commons; and The Political Uncommons: The Cross-Cultural Logic of the Global Commons (2011 Routledge; 2018 paperback)–a study of the global commons in international law and the legal challenges presented by indigenous communities. Her current book manuscript on the Solar Commons is for a general audience. Dr. Milun collaborates with public artists to create more accessible ways of presenting complex legal and technical issues involving renewable energy, common property ownership, climate change mitigation.
Alongside her professional work, she raised three sons. Kathryn lives in Duluth, Minnesota with her partner Randel Hanson, an urban organic farmer and mentor for new farmers.