Every time we glance at our phones, open our laptops or climb into a car, Americans engage with the global mining industry. That will continue to be true as society transitions to a low-carbon energy system, since mining produces lithium, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements for things like solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. As energy demand increases and the country uses more metal for defense and manufacturing, President Donald Trump’s administration has emphasized the importance of American dominance in critical materials, pushing for mining expansion across the country and in February unveiling a $12 billion critical minerals stockpile initiative.
Yet mining also poses significant threats to water, soil and air and the local communities and broader environments dependent upon them. In that context, it’s clearly important to look from multiple perspectives at the processes that inform the industry, its impact on the communities within which it operates and its potential paths forward. Experts gathered to discuss these and other questions at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Critical Minerals and Metals March 12 and 13, hosted by the George Washington University’s Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), the Alliance for a Sustainable Future, and Geography & Environment Department, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The conference originated as a way to bring together researchers on nine projects funded by the Sloan Foundation’s Critical Minerals and Metals Grant, said co-organizer Scott Odell, assistant research professor of geography in GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. But GW’s location in Washington, D.C., also presented an opportunity to bring those researchers into conversation with experts from the worlds of policy, industry, community organizations and beyond.
Organizers hoped to “bring all of those different sectors together to explore ways in which we can work on critical minerals more effectively in this current moment, which as this audience knows is a unique moment for critical minerals,” Odell said.
To open the two day conference, members of the nine funded research projects shared the preliminary results of their research and exchanged ideas during three panel discussions—the first on the technical development and impacts of critical mineral mining, a second on community relations and a third on emerging trends and impacts.
These interdisciplinary conversations matter because “systems are interconnected,” said Caitlin Grady, director of research and policy at GW’s Global Food Institute and associate professor of engineering management and systems engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who moderated the opening panel.
The funded projects under discussion included a community-driven participatory exploration of the equity implications of critical mineral mining and water scarcity in the United States’ Great Basin region; an examination of the technical, environmental, social and legal considerations for producing critical minerals from “tailings,” a hazardous waste produced by mining projects; and the possibilities for establishing a “green” graphite supply chain, manufactured from plastic and biomass waste, in the U.S.
A second set of panels convened representatives from the mining industry, community organizations and government to explore how researchers can engage effectively with external stakeholders. Helaina Matza, a double GW alumna who is chief strategic development officer at TechMet Ltd and former U.S. Department of State acting special coordinator, highlighted the strength and interdisciplinarity of the convening. She said effective communication is key to a sustainable future for mining: People need to know both that policy makes a difference in the mining sphere and that effective policy requires cooperation between players who don’t regularly interact.
Keynote speaker Deanna Kemp, director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at Australia’s University of Queensland, unpacked for attendees what it means to be a researcher aiming for real impact on this field: how she engages with audiences whose priorities are different from her own, interfaces with industry professionals, lays the groundwork for meaningful conversations and maintains academic independence.
A major part of her work involves meeting audiences where they are, establishing shared areas of concern to help mitigate objections to unfamiliar points of view or potentially jarring research.
“We don't bring social theory into conversations with engineers, we avoid industry speak in our peer-reviewed work and we're very aware of our standpoint in community spaces,” Kemp said. “Moving between these spaces, it’s a conscious practice to ensure that we don't drift intellectually…That independence of thought is something that we work really hard to maintain.”
When Kemp speaks to people outside the world of social science, she said, “If I can ready their minds to think like a social scientist even for a day, it feels like really impactful work.”
It’s important to encourage this kind of broad critical thinking outside the academic ivory tower, she said, because blind spots in mining practice and regulation can lead to history repeating itself in disastrous ways. Just one example: tailings dam collapses, which occur when an insufficiently stable structure is left behind to contain the (often-hazardous) waste from a completed or abandoned mining project. In 1979, such a collapse at a uranium extraction site in New Mexico resulted in the largest release of radioactive material in American history, larger than the better-known meltdown at Three Mile Island and second only to the Chernobyl disaster. Decades later, in 2019, a tailings collapse in Brazil killed 270 people and is still considered the country’s worst environmental disaster. Similar major collapses followed in South Africa in 2022, in Zambia in 2025 and more.
Often, Kemp said, an initial disaster triggers calls for reform and progress, but that urgency dissipates with time—a major problem, because the same underlying conditions that caused these disasters still exist at hundreds of sites worldwide.
Given that global context and the importance of the work, Kemp said, she hoped to see other social science-centered hubs for mining research like the CSRM arise—perhaps even driven by the researchers in her audience.
“It’s very possible to do this yourselves,” she said. “We want siblings in the world.”
“GW’s team is working with Kemp and others to do just that by developing a proposal to build a global network of mining scholars,” said conference co-organizer and SRI Director Robert Orttung, who worked closely with SRI colleagues Sophie Holtzman and Madeline de Quillacq on this event.