Select Page

Jessica M. Smith

Professor, Engineering, Design, and Society Division
Director, Humanitarian Engineering & Science Graduate Programs

Personal website with up-to-date information, including CV

About

As an anthropologist, Professor Smith’s research interests focus around public accountability and engineering, with a particular focus on the mining and energy industries. She spent her 2018 sabbatical as a British Academy Visiting Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland). Her book Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility, published open access by The MIT Press in 2021, was funded by a Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM grant from the National Science Foundation.

Professor Smith’s first major research project investigated gender and mining 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 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a research grant from the National Science Foundation and received the 2018 Western Social Science Association book prize. 

Professor Smith 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 also maintains an active research agenda on engineering education, including low-income and first generation engineering students. She is currently co-PI on a five-year NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education grant that educates 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. In 2016 her Corporate Social Responsibility course was named an Exemplar in Engineering Ethics by the National Academy of Engineering.

Education

  • PhD in Anthropology with certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan, 2009
  • MA in Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2006
  • BA in Anthropology, International Studies, and Latin American Studies with minors in Spanish and Women’s Studies, Macalester College, 2003

active funded research projects

2021 – 2027    National Science Foundation Grant 2130157 “Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA): Leveraging Funds of Knowledge for Student Success.” (Co-PI, $1.5 million)

2017- 2023    NSF Grant 1743749 “PIRE-Sustainable Communities & Gold Supply Chains: Integrating Responsible Engineering & Local Knowledge to Design, Implement & Evaluate Sustainable Artisanal Mining in Latin America.” (Co-PI, $4 million)

2017-2021    NSF grant 1734044 “EAGER: Investigating and Pinpointing the College Success Factors for First-Generation, Underrepresented College Students in Engineering.” (PI, $300,000)

2015-2021    NSF Research Grant 1540298: “The Ethics of Extraction: Integrating Corporate Social Responsibility into Engineering Education” (PI, $450,000)

 

Selected Publications

Engineering and social responsibility

  • Smith, Jessica M. 2021. Extracting Accountability: Engineering and Corporate Social Responsibility. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  • Marlin-Tackie, Frances, Shurraya Denning, and Jessica M. Smith. 2020. Fracking Controversies: Enhancing public trust in local government through energy justice. Energy Research & Social Science (65): 101440. ttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101440
  • Smith, Jessica M. 2019. The Ethics of Material Provisioning: Insiders’ Views of Work in the Extractive Industries. The Extractive Industries & Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.05.014
  • Zilliox, Skylar and Jessica M. Smith. 2018. Colorado’s Fracking Debates: Citizen Science, Conflict and Collaboration. Science as Culture 27 (2): 221-241. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2018.1425384
  • Smith, Jessica and Johan Thomas van Ierland. 2018. Framing Controversy on Social Media: #NoDAPL and the Debate about the Dakota Access Pipeline on Twitter. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 61 (3): 226 – 241. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8382288
  • Zilliox, Skylar and Jessica M. Smith. 2017. Memorandums of Understanding and Public Trust in Local Government for Colorado’s Unconventional Energy Industry. Energy Policy 107: 72-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.04.032

Energy Ethics

Coal and Energy Transitions

  • Smith, Jessica M. 2021. How will we remember coal? SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/remembering-coal/
  • Smith, Jessica M. 2019. Boom to Bust, Ashes to (Coal) Dust: The Contested Ethics of Energetic Exchanges in the US Coal Market Collapse. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (S1): 91-107. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13016
  • Smith, Jessica. 2017. Blind Spots of Liberal Righteousness. Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots series on “The Rise of Trumpism.” January 18, 2017. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1044-blind-spots-of-liberal-righteousness
  • Smith, Jessica M. and Abraham Tidwell. 2016. Everyday Lives of Energy Transitions: Contested Sociotechnical Imaginaries in the American West. Social Studies of Science 46(3): 327-350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312716644534
  • Tidwell, Abraham and Jessica M. Smith. 2015. Morals, Materials, and Technoscience: Reimagining Energy Security as a Sociotechnical Imaginary in the United States. Science, Technology & Human Values 40(5): 687-711. http://dx.org/10.1177/0162243915577632
  • Rolston, Jessica Smith. 2014. Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  • Rolston, Jessica Smith. 2013. The Politics of Pits and the Materiality of Mine Labor: Making Natural Resources in the American West. American Anthropologist 115 (4): 582-594. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12050

Engineering education

  • Verdín, Dina, Jessica M. Smith, and Juan Lucena. 2021. Recognizing the Funds of Knowledge of First-Generation College Students in Engineering: An Instrument Development. Journal of Engineering Education.
  • Verdín, Dina, Jessica Smith, and Juan Lucena. 2021. Funds of Knowledge as Pre-College Experiences that Promote Minoritized Students’ Interest, Self-Efficacy Beliefs, and Choice of Majoring in Engineering. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research 11(1): 192-213. https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1281
  • Smith, Jessica M., Carrie McClelland and Nicole Smith. 2017. Engineering Students’ Views of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study from Petroleum Engineering. Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (6): 1775-1790. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9859-x
  • Smith, Jessica M.and Juan Lucena. 2016. Invisible Innovators: How Low Income, First Generation (LIFG) Students Use Their Funds of Knowledge to Belong in Engineering. Engineering Studies 8 (1): 1-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2016.1155593

STS Underground

  • Kinchy, Abby, Roopali Phadke and Jessica M. Smith. 2018. Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation. Engaging Science, Technology & Society 4: 22-164. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2018.213

    Contact

    GRL Annex 220
    Colorado School of Mines
    Golden, CO 80401
    303-273-3944
    jmsmith@mines.edu