The School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) welcomes Vincent Ialenti as a MacArthur Foundation funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with SPPGA Director and Professor Allison Macfarlane. During the term of his appointment, Vincent will be examining the political, social, and economic drivers behind the United States’ transuranic waste “drum breach” accidents at the WIPP deep geological repository in 2014 and at Idaho National Laboratory in 2018.
Vincent holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University. His new book, Deep Time Reckoning (MIT Press, 2020), draws on his fieldwork among Finland’s nuclear waste repository safety case experts to propose imaginative strategies – “reckonings” – for envisioning potential future worlds. Vincent’s research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, and The MacArthur Foundation. He has published in Social Studies of Science, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Physics Today, Science & Technology Studies, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Alongside his academic work, Vincent has written for NPR, Forbes, Atlas Obscura, Nautilus, and other public outlets. He can be reached at vincent.ialenti@ubc.ca.
SPPGA Director Macfarlane said: “We are really excited to have Vincent join us at SPPGA. His knowledge of nuclear policy issues will complement our existing expertise on this topic and his anthropological and science studies background fits well with the larger community of scholars at UBC.”
