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About
Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon
Jessica M. Smith is an anthropologist and STS scholar whose research interests center on the intertwined social, technical, and ethical dimensions of energy transitions. She is a current Andrew Carnegie Fellow studying the everyday experiences of the coal downturn and the emergent carbon management industry in Wyoming and Colorado. She is also currently PI of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant studying sociotechnical integration in energy technology research.
She is Dean's Fellow for Earth and Society Programs and Professor in the Engineering, Design & Society Department at the Colorado School of Mines, where she also was the inaugural director of the interdisciplinary Humanitarian Engineering and Science graduate program.
Professor Smith holds a PhD in anthropology and graduate certificate in women's studies from the University of Michigan and a BA from Macalester College, where she majored in anthropology, international studies, and Latin American studies. A fellowship from the British Academy funded her first sabbatical at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St. Andrews.
Professor Smith's book Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility was published open access by The MIT Press in 2021 and was funded by a Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM grant from the National Science Foundation. Her first major research project investigated gender, mining, and kinship from the perspective of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, where she grew up and drove haul trucks in the mines for summer employment during college. That research forms the basis of her book Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West (Rutgers University Press, 2014), which was funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a research grant from the National Science Foundation. It received the 2018 Western Social Science Association book prize and honorable mentions from the Society for Economic Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of Work.
Professor Smith serves on the National Academies' Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering and as Editor-In-Chief of the journal Engineering Studies. She is a co-convener of the STS Underground network and co-organized the 2016 “Energy Ethics: Fragile Lives and Imagined Futures” conference at the University of St. Andrews, which was later published as special issues of Energy Research & Social Science and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. She continues to theorize the coal downturn in the United States and contribute to debates about more just energy transitions.
From her position at Mines, Professor Smith has developed an active, funded engineering education research agenda, including the funds of knowledge of low-income and first generation engineering students, belongingness among under-represented students in engineering, and the influence of social science learning for students' understandings of social responsibility. She recently concluded an NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education grant that educated US engineering undergraduates to co-design, implement and evaluate more sustainable artisanal mining practices and technologies with miners and affected communities in Peru and Colombia. She is now co-PI on an NSF grant that facilitates research exchanges between U.S. and Colombian engineering students.
Professor Smith’s courses introduce STEM students to social science concepts that enrich their learning, research, and future professional practice. She regularly teaches ENDS 430 Corporate Social Responsibility, EDNS 479 Community-Based Research, and HASS 490/590 Energy and Society.
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