Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Collaborative life among diverse actors involved in critical minerals and energy transitions research is increasingly structured by intimate preoccupations with collective viability, rather than with the processes of epistemic differentiation often foregrounded in analyses of interdisciplinarity.

Paper long abstract

Despite the many policy goals and geopolitical vulnerabilities surrounding the production of rare earth elements (REEs), Western governments, universities, and large corporations all remain loathe to support REE-focused innovation through intermediate stages of commercialization – a zone that financiers refer to as the “valley of death.” Consequently, the vast majority of this research is performed by small companies and groups whose horizons are defined not by shared political visions or epistemic commitments, but by their lack of durable institutional attachments and their relentless search for capital. This talk follows an ad-hoc collaboration between rural university students, a mineral exploration company, and U.S. national laboratory researchers brought together to develop processes for REE-focused biological mining. I explore how participants conceptualize their own particular “valley of death” while imagining future relationships with other researchers and articulating senses of place. As calls intensify for collaborative innovation on problems surrounding critical minerals even as the risks of research flow to individual researchers, small firms, and communities near extractive sites, I argue that collaborative life among the diverse actors pursuing energy transitions research is increasingly structured by intimate preoccupations with viability, rather than with the processes of epistemic differentiation often foregrounded in analyses of interdisciplinarity.