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Breakthroughs in nuclear knowledge occur by traversing disciplinary and cultural boundaries—with others. The Nuclear Humanities Collaboratory documents just some of that work.
2011-ongoing:  Archives
2011-ongoing:  Antipodean 
2002-ongoing:  Exposures
2014-on hold:  Reimaginings
2009-on hold:  Dialogues

Australia is both home to the world’s oldest continuous cultures, as well as one third of all the known uranium on Earth. Australia is therefore a critical site for understanding the nuclear fuel cycle as future cultural and environmental heritage.︎

Principal investigator/s: N.A.J. Taylor︎Sponsors: Deakin University, Killam Trusts, and The University of British Columbia
Funding: $350,000 (internal, incl. salary)
Key output/s: a living digital humanities project︎ and a series of scholarly publications 


This project asks how and why the archives of environmentally remediated uranium mining and contaminated sites are managed over immediate, intermediate, and possibly even far-future (e.g. 10,000 or more years) timeframes. It does so by engaging STEM-based collaborators from Environmental Engineering with both knowledge and practical experience of the legal and regulatory landscape for archiving records, knowledges and memory (RK&M) relating to uranium extraction, as well as its contamination, remediation and waste management in the Australian and international contexts.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎ 
Co-investigators: Chu Xia Lin (Deakin), David Lowe (Deakin), Emily Potter (Deakin), Paul Brown (UNSW) and Gavin Mudd (RMIT)
Sponsor: Deakin University’s Science and Society Network︎
Funding: $3,000 (internal)
Key output: a literature review for an Australia Reearch Council grant proposal


The Atomic Photographers Guild is the pre-eminent collective dedicated to visualising all aspects of the nuclear age. Formed in 1987 by Robert Del Tredici, the Guild has since amassed an archive of photographic negatives and prints from more than forty photographers across seven decades. The collection begins with the world’s two first atomic photographers: Berlyn Brixner, the United States’ government’s head photographer of the Manhattan Project, and Yoshito Matsushige, the only photographer to document the atomic destruction of Hiroshima from inside that city on August 6, 1945. Despite the significance of the Guild’s archive, the collection has yet to be formally catalogued and digitised.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎
Institutional partner: Atomic Photographers Guild︎
Sponsor: Australian Academy of the Humanities︎
Funding: $2,000 (external)
Key output: cataloguing and digitisation of the Guild’s Yoshito Matsushige, Beryl Brixner, and Robert Del Tredici archive︎

Richard Routley/Sylvan is widely regarded as having pioneered the academic subfield of Environmental Philosophy. Less well known are his contributions to nuclear thought which were mostly self-published from his office in the 1970s and 80s. Through archival research, this project performs the most thoroughgoing investigation into Sylvan’s nuclear ethics and politics ever undertaken.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎ Institutional partner: John Denis Fryer Memorial Library of Australian Literature︎
Sponsors: The University of Queensland and Deakin University’s Centre for Contemporary Histories
 Funding: $20,000 (external + in kind) + $7,500 (internal)
Key outputs: a monograph and companion Omeka digital exhibition︎