Dr. Elizabeth J. Wilson is a Professor of Environmental Studies and was the founding Director of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society (2017-2022). She studies how energy systems innovate and evolve in the face of new technologies, new societal pressures and new risks. One current research project focuses on Offshore Wind and examines the gaps between policy goals and practice in the U.S. and internationally. She studies how federal, state, and local institutions are evolving to support and thwart Offshore Wind development within the context of energy system transitions. Other research efforts are examining battery storage technologies in different Regional Transmission Organizations and Gen AI uses for reproducible research. Her research integrates policy goals in the energy system and maps them on institutions, legal frameworks, economics, and politics.  Wilson's previous research examines Regional Transmission Organizations, (which manage the transmission planning, electricity markets and grid operations for over 70 percent of North American electricity sales), Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Smart Grids, onshore Wind Power, and Renewables Policy. Recent books include Energy Law and Policy, Fourth Edition (West Academic Publishing) (with Davies, Klass, Outka, Tomain and Osofsky) and Smart Grid (R)evolution: Electric Power Struggles (Cambridge Press) (with Stephens and Peterson). 

While directing the Institute she oversaw the construction of the new building, worked with Advancement to raise $54 million, brought in and supported another $5 million in research grants, awarded $800,000 in research funds, established a Sustainable Energy minor and sponsored talks, workshops, seminars and events engaging faculty, students, and practitioners across campus and around the world.

Wilson was awarded a 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and was selected as a 2014-5 CIC Academic Leadership Fellow. She was chosen as a Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2011. She spent the 2009-2010 academic year as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, supported by a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, and 2016-7 and 2021-2 at the Danish Technical University's National Wind Research Laboratory. Prior to joining Dartmouth College, Wilson was a Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy and Law at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota (2005-2026).  At the University of Minnesota, Wilson worked for a decade with the Institute on the Environment, which supports a wide range of initiatives and projects related to land and water use, food diversity, sustainable enterprise, and the integration of economics and ecology.  Previously she worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before that Wilson worked in Belgium, Burundi and Tanzania. She holds a doctorate in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.