Workshop: Critical Mineral Histories

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This workshop invites scholars to discuss “critical minerals” in new and broad
historical contexts. Today, critical minerals are a common shorthand for the
anticipated raw materials of clean energy technologies. However, policy makers
have applied the label to any mineral with an imagined supply risk deemed vital
to national security or geopolitical stature – from the raw materials of batteries
and magnets to fighter jets and precision guided munitions. Recent scholarship
has focused on how the supply chains of decarbonization are folded into Cold War
military-industrial and security frameworks — with dire consequences for
frontline communities, ecosystems, and our collective futures (e.g., Riofrancos,
2025; Howe, 2023; Sanders et al., 2019; Klinger, 2018; Black, 2018). In doing so,
they have underlined not just the continued influence and impact of postwar
strategic planning on our contemporary political and planetary climates, but also
the conceptual fluidity and contingencies of “criticality” itself.

Proceeding from this key insight, this workshop takes special interest in
contributions looking beyond familiar critical mineral narratives, contexts, or
source materials. Crucially, it asks: what does it mean to write critical mineral
histories in the Anthropocene? If critical mineral supply chains are physical
markers of the Great Acceleration — the postwar exponential growth of
anthropogenic impacts on the Earth System – then they are also artifacts with
historical roots in the “Long Acceleration” of capitalism and empire since 1500
(Jonsson and Brescius, 2025). Early modern and 19th century historians have
illuminated not only key precedents, but also productively unsettled key
vocabulary used by critical minerals scholarship – e.g., ‘economic growth,’
‘environment,’ ‘sustainability’ – pointing to a plurality of conceptual frameworks
guiding historical actors’ relationship to their material worlds (e.g., Felten and
Raphael, 2023; Seijas and Murillo, 2021; Benson, 2020). By bringing together
scholars working on the political economies and geopolitics of mineral resources
in distinct geographies and temporalities – from the early modern to the
contemporary – this workshop aims to foster surprising connections,
comparative analyses, and an expanded understanding of what it means to write
critical mineral histories in the Anthropocene.

Submission Guidelines: Interested participants should submit a proposal (200-
250 words) and a short biography (approx..150 words) by 10 January 2026 to
Gustave Lester at glester@kth.se. Applicants will be notified in late January.
Costs of travel and accommodations will be covered for accepted applicants. For
further questions, please contact glester@kth.se.