Riyoko Shibe is a PhD student in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Their project research examines the development of Grangemouth’s petrochemical industry – a petroleum town in Scotland’s central belt – under BP Chemicals between 1951 and 2005. This is funded by a Doctoral Studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. They have published in Enterprise and Society, Antipode, and the Journal of the British Academy and presented at the Business History Conference and Economic History Society conference. In 2024, Riyoko co-authored a report for the Just Transition Commission (JTC), an independent advisory body to the Scottish government, “The Grangemouth refinery closure: workers’ perspectives”. From May to August 2025, they have been undertaking an internship with the JTC researching on how to maximise the social, economic and environmental value of just transition funding in Grangemouth following the refinery closure.
Energy, Industry and Society: Grangemouth, Scotland from 1950 to 2005
My project looks at life, work and community in Grangemouth, a petrochemical and oil refining town in Scotland from the 1950s to 2000s. The petrochemical industry is distinct when it comes to deindustrialisation. Rather than closure, employment contraction is coupled with intensive investment into new petrochemical infrastructure. In Scotland, this was concentrated in Grangemouth: while other sites across the UK closed throughout the 1980s, the BP Chemicals site in Grangemouth was kept open.
I am interested in what it was like to live and work around polluting and carbon-intensive industry, and how the experience of the community and workplace changed as petrochemicals became increasingly entrenched in the locality. The analysis is underpinned by ‘noxiousness’ – environmentally destructive industrial production harmful to both humans and non-humans – and its intensification through deindustrialisation as the chemical workforce was shed. My research is based on oral history interviews with former and current workers, residents and political representatives; and archive study – local, regional and national government files as well as business and trade union documents.
Website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/pgrs/riyokoshibe/
