Maxime Polleri

Maxime Polleri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval and a member of the Graduate School of International Studies.

As an anthropologist of technoscience, he studies the governance of disasters, waste and misinformation, with a primary focus on nuclear topics and regional expertise in Japan.

Dr. Polleri is the author of Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan, which examines the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. The book explores how different groups clash and collaborate to govern something as controversial as radiation risks and post-disaster recovery.

Dr. Polleri is now examining the governance of high-level radioactive waste in deep geological repositories. He has conducted research on the process of consent-based siting by focusing on Canadian and Japanese case studies. He is especially interested in studying how specific imaginaries of time and space influence the governance of spent nuclear fuel, as well as its burial for millennia across different cultures.

Other areas of interest include an anthropological approach to misinformation and disinformation studies. An edited volume on this topic is currently under advance contract with Routledge.