Jessica M. Smith

Professor, Engineering, Design, and Society Department
Dean’s Fellow, Earth and Society Programs

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

About

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 to study sociotechnical integration in energy technology research.

She is Dean’s Fellow for Earth and Society Programs and Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department. 

Her 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 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 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a research grant from the National Science Foundation. 

Professor Smith is 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, she has developed an active, funded research agenda on engineering education, 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 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.

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

• Department of Energy Award “CarbonSAFE Eos: Developing Commercial Sequestration for Southern Colorado.” (Co-PI, $32.6 million, 2024-2027)
• Sloan Foundation Award “Assessing Sociotechnical Integration in Energy Technology Research and Development.” (PI, $250,000, 2024-2025)
• Department of Energy Award “Flexible Hybrid Solid Oxide Fuel Cell CHP System using Low-Carbon Fuels.” (Co-PI, $6 million, 2024-2027)
• NEXUS Mines/NREL seed grant “Understanding the Sociotechnical Ecosystems of Energy Technology Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment” (Co-PI, $10,000 Mines share, 2023)
•  National Science Foundation Grant 2130157 “Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA): Leveraging Funds of Knowledge for Student Success.” (Co-PI, $1.5 million, 2021-2027)

Peer reviewed books

• Smith, Jessica M. 2021. Extracting Accountability: Engineering and Corporate Social Responsibility. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Rolston, Jessica Smith. 2014. Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Edited, peer-reviewed journal special issues

• High, Mette M. and Jessica M. Smith, eds. 2019. Energy and Ethics? Special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (S1): 1-194. https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679655/2019/25/S1
• 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://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/issue/view/10
• Smith, Jessica M. and Mette M. High, eds. 2017. Exploring the Anthropology of Energy: Ethnography, Energy and Ethics. Special issue of Energy Research and Social Science 30: 1-116. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22146296/30

 Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Smith, Jessica et al. 2025. Community-based research supports more just and equitable industrial decarbonization. Nature Communications 16, 8239. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63569-x
• Smith, Jessica M. The politics of percentage: Informating justice in the US clean energy rush. Critique of Anthropology, 44(3), 341–361. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X241269625
• Smith, Jessica M. Racializing rural places through USDA home economics agricultural extension, 1965-1982. Journal of Rural Studies, 106, 103240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103240
• Verdín, Dina, Smith, Jessica, & Lucena, Juan Carlos. First-generation college students’ funds of knowledge support the development of an engineering role identity. Journal of Engineering Education, 113(2), 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20591
• Smith, Jessica, Cecilia Schroeder*, Kate Smits, Juan Lucena, and Oscar Restrepo Baena. 2023. Pollution, obligation, and care: Perspectives from artisanal and small-scale gold mining and farming in rural Colombia. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 2243762. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2023.2243762
• 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101440
• Smith, Jessica M. The Ethics of Material Provisioning: Insiders’ Views of Work in the Extractive Industries. The Extractive Industries & Society 6: 807-814. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.05.014
• Smith, Jessica M. 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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. 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