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 a regional expertise on 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.
Lastly, he is investigating how generative AI systems reproduce and shape nuclear imaginaries, with a focus on epistemic bias, misinformation, and the development of ethical and educational tools to govern nuclear discourse in AI-generated content.
Dr. Polleri is a Network Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where he was previously a MacArthur Nuclear Security pre- and post-doctoral fellow. He is also a member of MITATE Lab, an international research program on Fukushima issues.
Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan (NYU Press, 2026) offers an ethnographic look at how the disaster was handled by Japan. Unlike prior nuclear-related narratives, such as those surrounding Chernobyl or Hiroshima, which focused on themes of harm, trauma, and victimization, the Japanese government consistently put forward a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual bringing home of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity. This narrative worked to counter other understandings of recovery, such as those of worried citizens unsuccessfully fighting for permanent evacuation because they were afraid to go back to their homes.
Providing a rich theorization of how both governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, Radioactive Governance not only displays how Fukushima became a story of hope and resilience rather than of victimization, but also how radioactive governance shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to relying on international organizations and domestic citizens to co-manage the aftermath of disasters.
Examines how Japanese authorities transformed the Fukushima nuclear disaster from crisis to "recovery" using diverse strategies. Through ethnographic fieldwork, Polleri reveals how state agencies, scientific bodies, and citizen groups shaped perceptions of radiation risks, enabling a politics of revitalization that normalized contamination and prioritized economic concerns over evacuation demands. Radioactive Governance offers critical insights into disaster management in increasingly toxic environments. ~Daniel P. Aldrich, author of Sites Fights, Building Resilience, and Black Wave
Radioactive Governance provides a gripping account of the multilayered, extended response to Japan’s unimaginable triple disaster of March 2011. Thousands died, far-reaching ecological damage accumulates—yet our faith in nuclear power lives on. In crisp prose, Maxime Polleri convincingly questions the transformative power of catastrophes—an essential, compelling read. ~Sabine Frühstück, University of California, Santa Barbara
Rooted in meticulous fieldwork, Radioactive Governance centers us in post-311 Fukushima. Polleri details emerging models of nuclear crisis and social perception management in the 21st century. An immensely readable and compelling peak beneath the surface of radiological disaster management as it unfolds. ~Robert Jacobs, Emeritus Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute and Hiroshima City University