our board
Dr Anaïs Maurer
Board Member
Dr Anaïs Maurer was raised in Mā’ohi Nui, the country also known as French-occupied Polynesia, where France detonated 193 nuclear and thermonuclear bombs. She currently lives in New York and researches the consequences of nuclear colonialism at Rutgers University.
At the Nuclear Truth Project, she is part of a collaborative effort to adapt and translate the Protocols to reflect the specific challenges faced by nuclear survivors in Mā’ohi Nui.
She has published extensively on the gendered consequences of nuclear testing and on decolonial strategies of resistance to nuclear imperialism. Her first book, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors to Climate Activists, analyzes Pacific artists’ transgenerational fight against the nuclear arms race and climate change by underscoring the environmental racism at the root of both existential threats.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THE NUCLEAR TRUTH PROJECT
“I love the Nuclear Truth Project for its rootedness in affected communities’ stated needs. In too many transnational NGOs, nuclear survivors are solicited to share their expertise on the consequences of the nuclear industrial complex solely in a form of personal trauma. By contrast, every endeavor launched by the Nuclear Truth Project, from its Reports to challenge nuclear secrecy to its Protocols for ethical research, is elaborated by, alongside, and for frontline communities.
The Protocols are particularly precious to me, as they help foster conversations with scholars, educators, and journalists to challenge problematic trends in nuclear research. Most nuclear science has historically been conducted by outsiders, responding to nuclear armed states’ funding agenda and to researchers’ individual career goals. The protocols can help orient research agendas towards questions aiming to heal nuclear harm in frontline communities, and replace extractive practices with ethical and decolonial modes of investigation.
The Nuclear Truth Project also manages the extraordinary feat to simultaneous foster antinuclear rage and a loving community, and I am very grateful for the friendships and solidarity nurtured among its members.”