2026-2027 Distinguished Lecturer: Jessica M. Smith

THE HUBRIS OF TRANSITION: ENERGY PASTS AND FUTURES IN SOUTHERN COLORADO

Industrial energy development has become a 21^st century gold rush, spurred on all over the rural West by unlikely convergences: national security, climate urgency, predicted exponential growth in data centers, private equity’s perpetual search for new frontiers, and local desires for economic development – or simply preservation as the future starts to feel less certain. Southern Colorado sits on the frontlines of these transformations. The high desert rangeland surrounding Pueblo is home to the state’s largest coal-fired power plant, the world’s largest wind tower manufacturing plant, miles and miles of solar panels, a natural gas plant, experiments in large-scale battery storage, and hotly contested visions for future nuclear energy and carbon sequestration. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, Professor Smith investigates the lived experiences of energy transitions and their greater significance for the foundational stories we tell ourselves as a nation – about community, melting pots, hard work, and the American dream. Investigating the links between energy, history, place, and culture opens up the stakes of doing social science and humanities scholarship at a moment of epochal change, from a STEM-focused institution like Mines. 

Jessica M. Smith is an anthropologist and STS scholar whose research interests center on the intertwined social, technical, and ethical dimensions of energy transitions. With the support of an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, she is completing a book on political polarization and the energy transition in the American West. Professor Smith was named a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences in 2022 and held a British Academy International Visiting Fellowship at the University of St. Andrews in 2018. She is the author of two books and more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in anthropology, science and technology studies, environmental social science, and engineering education journals. Her research has also been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. She currently serves as Editor-In-Chief of the journal Engineering Studies and as a member of the U.S. National Academies Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering. She is Co-Director of the Center for Ethnography and Professor in the Department of Engineering, Design, and Society at the Colorado School of Mines.