Dr Mette High
Director of Research
Reader
Biography
Mette High’s field research is in Mongolia and the United States, where she focuses on questions of ethics and economic life.
High is currently on research leave directing the Centre for Energy Ethics at St Andrews, which is a privately funded and fast-growing research centre that brings together scholars across all disciplines and all levels of seniority. Concerned with issues of energy and climate change, the Centre offers a creative and dynamic research environment in which to push debates further and ask new questions in order to create a better energy future for us all.
She is also leading a new Scottish Funding Council-funded consortium that will soon launch the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods. The Alliance will bring together all the universities in Scotland along with business, industry, government, and community organisations to accelerate Scotland's interdisciplinary research capacity.
In addition to being Director of Research for the Department, High is also bringing to a close her European Research Council funded project: "The Ethics of Oil: Finance Moralities and Environmental Politics in the Global Oil Economy (ENERGY ETHICS)". Based on multiple ethnographic studies across the world, this 6-year research project has involved a 10-person research team and considers how people in the oil economy make financial and ethical valuations of oil. As this project brings an anthropological sensitivity to issues of money, energy and climate change, its ambition is to provide a novel framework for investigating how oil valuations relate to political reforms and new climate economic initiatives.
Prior to this project, High was funded by the Leverhulme Trust to carry out a 3-year research project in the state of Colorado, USA. Building on her theoretical interest in ethical sensibilities and economic transformations in resource extraction, she examined how oil and gas company workers perceived the risks and possibilities involved when applying the technology of ‘hydraulic fracturing’. Her fieldwork with on-site crew and executives in company headquarters informed her interest in topics such as energy industries, commodity markets and global finance, calculation and risk.
Before shifting her ethnographic focus to the United States, High pursued a research project on the involvement of Buddhist monks in a country-wide gold rush in Mongolia. Funded by the British Academy, she carried out ethnographic fieldwork in monasteries near the mining camps. In this project, she examined the institutionalisation of religious practice and self-transformational ethics in the context of a booming gold mining industry and drastic political reform.
For her study of the Mongolian gold rush, specifically the relationship between fundamental taboos related to the land and its spirits, she received her PhD in social anthropology from University of Cambridge in 2008.
Underlying all her research projects, where money, metals and energy travel far beyond national borders, is a keen and ongoing desire to understand how global economic processes intersect with intimate moral views. In addition to her academic publications, she also explores these issues in collaborations with artists and film makers as well as in her work as co-Chair for Research on the Environmental Sustainability Board and screening committee member of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment.
Teaching
SA1002 – Section ‘Oil and Economic Life’
SA2001 – Section ‘New Turns’
SA2002 - Section 'Virtual Worlds'
SA3065 – Anthropology of Economic Life
SA4064 - Anthropology of Energy
SA5011 – Introduction to Anthropological Theory
Research areas
Mongolia, USA, extractive industries, economic transformations, energy and climate change, wealth and value, Buddhism and Christianity, ethics and cosmology.
She is currently supervisor for six PhD candidates: four at University of St Andrews and external PhD supervisor for a PhD candidate at NMBU, Norway, and a PhD candidate at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.
PhD supervision
- David Humphrey
- Andreas Vavvos
- Lorenzo Sapochetti
- Viktoriia Grivina
Selected publications
-
Consultation feedback on the Scottish government’s proposals for a heat in buildings bill
Field, S., High, M. M., Shipton, Z., Dickie, J. & Thomason, K., 8 Mar 2024, (Submitted) 10 p.Research output: Book/Report › Other report
-
Open access
Comments on the Scottish Government’s Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan: Response ID: ANON JDU2 DSGY C
Field, S., Finch, A. A., Gardiner, N. J., High, M. M., Hogan, J., Krishnan Jagadamma, L. & Skrzypek, E., Sept 2023Research output: Book/Report › Other report
-
Net zero society: scenarios and pathways: how could societal changes affect the path to net zero?
High, M. M., 6 Apr 2023, Online: The Government Office for Science. 194 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
-
Open access
Articulations of ethics: energy worlds and moral selves
High, M. M., 24 Mar 2022, The Palgrave handbook of the anthropology of technology. Bruun, M. H., Wahlberg, A., Douglas-Jones, R., Hasse, C., Hoeyer, K., Kristensen, D. B. & Winthereik, B. R. (eds.). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, p. 607-626 20 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Open access
Solarities: seeking energy justice
After Oil Collective, High, M. M., Vemuri, A. (ed.) & Barney, D. (ed.), 1 Jan 2022, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 92 p. (Forerunners (Minneapolis, Minn.); no. 57)Research output: Book/Report › Book
-
Open access
Utopias of oil: private equity and entrepreneurial ambition in the U.S. oil and gas industry
High, MM., 1 Nov 2022, In: Cultural Anthropology. 37, 4, p. 738-763 26 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
-
Open access
Written Evidence: Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee - Inquiry on Energy pricing and the future of the Energy Market
Field, S., High, M. M., Skrzypek, E. & Ulph, D. T., 28 Mar 2022, 20 p.Research output: Book/Report › Other report
-
Open access
Written evidence: The House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee - Inquiry into behaviour change in the context of climate change and the environment
Field, S., High, M. M. & Skrzypek, E., 26 Jan 2022Research output: Book/Report › Other report
-
Open access
Changing the Conversation on Energy
High, M. M., 10 Dec 2021, Energy Humanities.Research output: Other contribution
-
How to do better: Climate ambitions and energy transitions at the COP26
High, M. M., 30 Nov 2021, The Energy BlogResearch output: Other contribution