Dr Daniele Moretti is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Brunel University (2006), where he was temporary lecturer before joining Cambridge. Since 2004 he has conducted research on the social, cultural, economic, and environmental implications of artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Morobe Goldfields of Papua New Guinea. His current British Academy research project focuses on the role of dreams in human relations with the environment, with specific emphasis on gold mining, hunting and gathering and subsistence gardening.

Publications:
Ecocosmologies in the making: new mining rituals in two Papua New Guinean societies. Forthcoming in Ethnology: An International Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 46 (4).

2006b The gender of the gold: an ethnographic and historical account of women's involvement in artisanal and small-scale mining at Mount Kaindi, Papua New Guinea. Oceania 76 (2): 133-149.

2006a Osama Bin Laden and the man-eating sorcerers: encountering 'the war on terror' in Papua New Guinea. Anthropology Today 22 (3): 13-17.

 

Dr. Mette M. High has carried out ethnographic research in Mongolia since 2001. During work for the International Labour Organisation in the country she became involved in multilateral initiatives towards improving the health and welfare of child labourers in illegal coal mines. She later began her doctoral research on the current Mongolian gold rush and received her PhD in social anthropology from University of Cambridge in 2008. Dr. High is currently Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Her research focuses on how changing labour regimes relate to kinship and gendered hierarchies. Whilst historical accounts describe how Mongolians punished mining activities for violating taboos against digging into the land, recent post-socialist policy changes regarding land use and rising gold prices have encouraged growth in today's booming mining sector. Based on fieldwork in both the mining camps and the surrounding areas, Dr. High's primary theoretical interest is in the significance of economic transformations for new forms of sociality and
moral being.

Publications:
2008. Wealth and Envy in the Mongolian Gold Mines. Cambridge Anthropology 27(3)

(Forthcoming) Dangerous Fortunes: An Anthropological Study of the Mongolian Informal Gold Mining Economy, transl. by Bum-Ochir Dulam, Admon Press: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

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