Overview

Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa Student Association, Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago in Ōtepoti Aotearoa are currently coordinating with partners for a conference in November 2022 on nuclear issues across Oceania. The conference is titled “Nuclear Connections Across Oceania: Coming Together to Address Nuclear Imperialism, Nuclear Colonialism and Their Material Consequences.”

TAOR Student Association and TAOR-NCPACS is partnering with the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago to host a conference 25-26 November 2022.

• We aim for Nuclear Connections Across Oceania to be accessible to people based in Aotearoa and globally.
• The conference aims to collaboratively address the harms caused by nuclear technologies and nuclear pollution.
• A key goal of the conference is to build relationships and strategise ways to address nuclear issues.

Nuclear Connections Across Oceania will be a free and open public event held in person or through our hybrid livestream. The conference provides an opportunity to hear from key activists, artists, researchers, and community members on the impact of the nuclear military and industrial complex.

The aim

As an organising team, we believe that addressing the historical and ongoing harms of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism will require people with various experiences and expertise on nuclear issues to build relationships, collaboratively imagine what a nuclear-free future might look like, and critically strategise how we might get there together. Thus, we have designed Nuclear Connections Across Oceania as a conference which brings together scholars, activists, frontline community members, youth, elders, artists and politicians from across Oceania to engage in conversations about current nuclear issues, as well as how they intersect with other life-threatening events that require serious attention (e.g., climate change). We want Nuclear Connections Across Oceania to be accessible to people based in Aotearoa, Oceania and globally. Thus, we are planning a hybrid conference, which will be free and open to the public.

The idea

The idea for such a conference emerged out of conversations among students and staff at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability who have shared expertise and interests in questions related to nuclear technologies, nuclear colonialism and nonproliferation. Together we noticed that impending climate change and the current war in Ukraine have brought nuclear issues back into public awareness–approximately eleven years since the last time nuclear issues filled news headlines with the onset of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

We see how the current war in Ukraine has been heightening people’s awareness of the ongoing threat of nuclear war, which could be induced by a nuclear weapon or the destruction of other nuclear infrastructures (e.g., a nuclear power plant or a nuclear fuel storage facility) at the same time as the nuclear industry is aggressively framing nuclear energy as the answer to climate change. Yet, we are aware that Indigenous communities throughout the globe continue to suffer from the past and present harms of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism. This is particularly the case in the Pacific which has long served as the “nuclear playground” for many imperial nations.

This re-emergence of awareness around nuclear issues is happening around the time of the landmark 10th review conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which will take place in August 2022 and the Japanese government’s announcement that it will release wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi into the Pacific Ocean beginning in early 2023.

Within this context, there is a clear need for critical discussions about nuclear technologies, nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. There is also a need for those people most harmed by nuclear technologies to guide these discussions. Given its antinuclear policies and culture, as well as its location within Oceania, Aotearoa provides a unique context for hosting such critical conversations.

Projected Reach

We expect that our conference will engage approximately 100 people from Aotearoa, Oceania (the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Japan, Australia) and globally in critical discussions on current nuclear issues.

We expect that, due to our relationship with the Centre for Sustainability, higher vaccination rates, and a general reopening within Aotearoa, that we can likely attract around 60 members of the public to the event and hope to have at least 40 online attendees for a total of approximately 100 participants.

We plan to invite diverse groups interested in nuclear issues, including students, artists, activists and general members of the public. We also plan to invite politicians working on nuclear issues (e.g., disarmament) to increase the potential impact of the conference.

Projected Outcomes

We have designed a website to document the conference (and will upload recordings of presentations to the website (pending speaker permission). We will be taking photos of the conference and uploading them to the conference website as well. In addition, where possible we will be live tweeting and recording parts of the event so messages from speakers and attendees can be shared throughout the duration of the conference and after its conclusion.

Many of our speakers are planning to share the findings of the conference with their local communities, and we will ask them to share feedback with us on these processes (we will upload relevant photographs or insights to the conference website).

One of our organisers, who will also be speaking at the event, is also working on a nuclear mapping project (funded through the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons). The maps will be presented for the first time within the conference and will be shared with conference speakers, attendees and funders once they are completed in 2023.

Organising Team

• • Matthew Grant Fuller (National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa, University of Otago), PhD Student, Conference Co-Organiser and Presenter
    Matt Fuller (he/him) was originally born in Virginia USA, and attended the College of William & Mary for a BA in International Relations, and American University for an MA in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs. He is now a PhD student at the University of Otago where his thesis focuses on the campaign to ban Depleted Uranium. Between his MA and PhD, he was the Programme Assistant at the Corrymeela Peace and Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland, a video editor for the Democracy Development Programme in South Africa, and a Lecturer at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas.
  • Mino Cleverley (Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago), PhD Student, Conference Co-Organiser and Presenter
    Mino Cleverley (he/him) is a New Zealand born Samoan.  He is a PhD student at the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago, where his thesis focuses on indigenous responses to climate change and forced retreat due to sealevel rise.  Mino postulates that climate change is ‘slow violence’, being harm and damage that is sufferred over years, decades and even longer.  Nuclearism is another form of colonialist violence in Oceania, where the insidious consequences of nuclear testing and waste storage by the Global North persist and continue to cause harm to the indigenous inhabitants through no fault of their own.  Mino has a strong affinity for education and the empowerment of individuals and underserved communities.  He is a strong advocate for supporting marginalised people and communities, especially giving voice to peoples of Oceania.
  • Karly Burch (Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago), Research Fellow, Conference Co-Organiser and Presenter
    Dr Karly Burch (she/her) is a United States citizen and Aotearoa New Zealand resident currently working as a Research Fellow at the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability. Karly grew up as a settler in Hawaiʻi and has been studying nuclear issues for over ten years. She earned a joint MSc in agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and ISARA-Lyon in 2012. Karly also received a full doctoral scholarship from the University of Otago in 2015 and earned her PhD in sociology in August 2018. She was recently granted a Critical Nuclear Weapons Scholarship Grant from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The grant will fund collaborative research for the academic paper, “What is the nuclear future we want? Collaborative, anticolonial mapping as a tool to imagine Indigenous and settler futures beyond nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism,” which she plans to present at the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference. Karly is also currently working on a book manuscript titled Eating a Nuclear Disaster: Food, Science and Silence After Fukushima Daiichi. Based on Karly’s PhD scholarship, the manuscript situates food safety contestations in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster within wider nuclear imperial and nuclear colonial infrastructures, including nuclear weapon detonation sites and the uranium mines which make the ongoing development and proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy possible. Karly enjoys engaging in inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations and mentoring emerging scholars.
  • Ashley Macmillan (National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa, University of Otago), PhD Student, Conference Co-Organiser
    Ashley (she/her) is originally from Perth, in Western Australia, and prior to moving to Dunedin to undertake her PhD, she was working as a social worker with Housing First, in Auckland. She has also previously worked on: activist campaigns with Amnesty International Australia; as a community organiser; with vulnerable youth; with asylum seekers; and with rough sleepers. Ashley’s research is focused on community-based conflict prevention, which she terms . Her research has a specific focus on how communities foster peace and address conflict risk-factors before any violence is able to occur. So often, peace-work is not looked at until after violence has started. This research seeks to highlight the successful preventative work that is happening all the time, with a view to understanding how it can be strengthened.
  • Kalika Kastein (National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa, University of Otago), PhD Student, Conference Co-Organiser
    Kalika Kastein (she/they) is a current NZPSA member and an educator, peace researcher, and visual media specialist as well as a queer and non-binary third-generation Estonian-American. Currently, Kalika is a PhD candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago. Kalika’s PhD research started in 2020, funded through the University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship, and focuses on understanding forms of silence in peace and conflict studies. Kalika is a certified teacher in Hawaiʻi, and earned a Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins University. Kalika holds a Master of Arts in Peace Studies from International Christian University in Japan which was funded by the Rotary Peace Fellowship.
  • Jamie Cave (National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa, University of Otago), Master’s Student, Conference Co-Organiser
    Jamie Cave (she/her) is originally from Ōtautahi Christchurch and currently undertaking a coursework Master of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Jamie received the 2022 Master of Peace and Conflict Studies Study Award. Her dissertation focuses on dimensions of trust in the context of European refugee reception and Jamie is volunteering for the Red Cross Pathways to Settlement programme this year. She is a JENESYS (AFS Intercultural Programs) and MEXT scholar, having completed a Bachelor of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University in Japan where she volunteered in leadership roles for the AFS Kansai Regional Chapter. Since age 15, representing New Zealand as a Student Goodwill Ambassador to Christchurch’s sister city Kurashiki, Jamie has continued to hold strong links to Japan. She is a New Zealand registered early childhood teacher and 2022 AFS Youth Assembly delegate

Contact

If you have any questions about the conference, please email the TAOR Student Association at ncpacs.sa@gmail.com