Critical
Raw Materials
(CRM) Policy Lab
1
Critical Raw Materials (CRM) Policy Lab
What is the Policy Lab about?
The Critical Raw Materials (CRM) Policy Lab is a practical platform for reimagining and reshaping the governance of mining and critical minerals amid rapidly changing supply chains and growing social and environmental tensions. Based at the University of Sussex, the Lab works collaboratively with governments, development finance institutions, communities, and firms to design, test, and refine concrete solutions that make critical mineral sectors more just, resilient, and development-oriented, and therefore politically and economically viable.
Recognising that the demand for critical minerals is a global challenge that generates both opportunities and tensions across regions, the Lab explicitly integrates perspectives from the Global North and Global South. It provides a space to articulate and negotiate these perspectives, addressing asymmetries in power, capabilities, and risks, and to explore pathways in which securing mineral supply for global transitions can align with locally grounded development outcomes.
Four Key Pillars
Addressing governance gaps in the CRM sector:
This pillar looks into new global institutional innovations to enact radical changes in the mining system to address sustainability challenges
Global China and emerging CRM–manufacturing supply chains:
Mapping China’s global footprint in CRM and industrial sectors, particularly its medium- and long-term consequences for re-industrialization efforts in Africa, Latin America, Central and Southeast Asia.
Co-designing global and national mining policies and frameworks:
Interrogates the lessons from extractive industries governance in the 20th century to support the crafting of new policy proposals in CRM management models
Generating territorial legitimacy for the mining industry:
Generates and tests new analysis and designs for institutional innovations and participatory practices aimed at mitigating conflicts and strengthening legitimacy of governance processes in the mineral sector.
About the Lead Convenors
Jojo Nem Singh
Is a Principal Research Fellow in Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, UK, and one of the lead convenors of the Critical Raw Materials Policy Lab. He is the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant “Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals: A Trans-regional Comparison of Growth Strategies in Rare Earths Mining (GRIP-ARM), Grant no. 950056.” He has worked as an Expert Consultant for various international organisations, national governments, and development agencies.
Anabel Marín
Is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and a lead convenor of the Critical Raw Materials Policy Lab. She leads the Business, Markets and the State cluster at IDS and directs Bioleft, an open-source initiative for seed breeding. Her work focuses on transitions in the mining sector and the role of civic power in driving transformations in extractive industries.
Joanna Morley
Is a fellow of the Critical Raw Materials Policy Lab and a PhD graduate in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool (ESRC-funded). Her research covers the political economy of energy transitions, the challenges and consequences of large-scale energy infrastructure projects at national and local scales connected to international development agendas, and contested natural resource governance and socio-environmental politics, particularly in extractive states and emerging and developing economies in the Global South.
Yingfeng Ji
Is a research fellow of the Critical Raw Materials Policy Lab and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded GRIP-ARM project at School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. She holds her PhD and Mphil in Development Studies in at the University of Cambridge. Yingfeng’s research lies at the intersection of green industrial policy in developing countries, China’s overseas supply-chain strategies, and the political economy of critical minerals. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Central Asia on energy transitions and industrial policy (2020–2021), as well as in China’s critical minerals sector (2024–2025).
Arnie Cordero Trinidad
Is a Research Fellow on the ERC-funded GRIP-ARM (Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals) project at the University of Sussex, and an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, University of the Philippines Diliman. He received his PhD in Sociology from Trinity College Dublin. He has diverse research interests that span the sociology of development, migration, social class, and disaster risk reduction. He has published in high-ranked journals such as European Societies, Sociology, and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
Yingfeng Ji
Is a research fellow of the Critical Raw Materials Policy Lab and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC-funded GRIP-ARM project at School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. She holds her PhD and Mphil in Development Studies in at the University of Cambridge. Yingfeng’s research lies at the intersection of green industrial policy in developing countries, China’s overseas supply-chain strategies, and the political economy of critical minerals. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Central Asia on energy transitions and industrial policy (2020–2021), as well as in China’s critical minerals sector (2024–2025).
