Mette Marie High

PhD student in the Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge.

Her doctoral research concerns the advent of informal gold mining in Uyanga sum in the region of Övörkhangai, Mongolia. She analyses articulations of status and social hierarchy, drinking practices, discourses of fear as well as local ideas about spirits associated with the landscape. She argues that ninja mining is not only generated by economic factors (such as poverty and greed) but also fundamental sociocultural mechanisms. The research is supervised by Caroline Humphrey and is funded by the ESRC, King's College, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a Sigrid Rausing grant from MIASU, the William Wyse Fund and the Cambridge European Trust.

Her MPhil thesis "Golden Ambiguities - a study of gold mining in Mongolia through history" considers the use, manufacture and symbolic significance of gold focusing on the socialist period and the process of industrialisation in Mongolia.

Mette graduated from the London School of Economics with her BSc in Social Anthropology in 2002. Her Bachelor thesis "Landscapes in the Making - reconceptualising people and places" was a comparative analysis of Australian and Mongolian understandings of the relationships between people and their physical surroundings.

In addition to her academic study, Mette worked in 2001 for the International Labour Organisation in Mongolia. She was involved in projects targeting rural and urban child labour, particularly children working illegally in closed-down coalmines. Since 2005 she has worked for the Ongii River Movement, which is an NGO established by herders who want to create greater civil and national awareness of the environmental consequences of formal and informal sector mining. She is also presently on the board of directors for an NGO that focuses on the strengthening of women's rights in the ninja mining areas, especially with regards to domestic violence and education.
Mette also greatly enjoys rowing, playing squash, baking and making confectionary chocolates.

II will be presenting at the following 3 conferences:
11-13 April 2008, Copenhagen University: "Confronting Spiritual Dangers in the Mongolian Gold Mines"
22-23 June 2008, Musee du Quai Branly (Paris): "Wolves, Spirits and Humans"
15-17 November 2008, Vancouver (Canada): "'Alcohol Cures Everything': Masculinity and Morality in post-Socialist Mongolia"

Letters from the field