In 2021, feminist critical nuclear scholar Ray Acheson called on nuclear abolitionists to create opportunities to “learn from each other’s theories and practices of action and participation” in order to increase the “impact we will have across a range of social justice struggles.”1 This research commentary is a response to this call. Drawing on over two decades of combined experience as feminist scholars working in the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and critical nuclear studies, we share the negotiated practices that have sustained our research collaboration and led us to co-design maps that visualize the spread and scale of the global nuclear complex.

We began our research collaboration in 2021. Individually, we had been grappling with complex conditions we experienced and observed through our research projects investigating distinct nuclear contestations. Karly’s ethnographic research was based in Japan and involved grappling with questions of food safety governance in the aftermath of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy disaster. She has a particular interest in investigating tactics used to gaslight and silence people trying to discuss the consequences of eating nuclear waste.2 Emily employs ethnographic modes of analysis to examine the theoretical implications of using colonialism as the primary analytic lens for studying nuclear technologies in Canada, specifically focusing on how the development of nuclear infrastructures related to uranium mining delimits articulations of Indigenous sovereignty and jurisdictional authority.

Our ethnographic insights emerged from distinct places and in response to different nuclear infrastructures (for Karly nuclear energy reactors and for Emily uranium mines). Yet, we both observed and encountered active attempts to manage our critical inquiries, a process we term nuclear paternalism: an affective, disciplinary tactic that maintains a boundary between valid and invalid nuclear knowledge by treating those who raise critical questions as ignorant and in need of education.

Thus, despite our distinct research contexts, our inquiries converged in confronting similar forms of nuclear paternalism that disciplined our critical questions about aspects of the nuclear complex. This experience prompted us to pursue a collaboration centered on mapping the material spread and scale of an interconnected global nuclear complex through mobilizing publicly available data sets that would not be contested by nuclear weapon and energy advocates. Thus, while nuclear paternalism seeks to delimit critical inquiries by reinforcing hierarchical expertise and dismissing dissenting perspectives, we also experienced it as a generative force—one that compelled us to refine and reconceptualize our own critical nuclear scholarship. Based on our experience, we contend that nuclear paternalism not only attempts to reinscribe hierarchies of nuclear knowledge but also underscores the need for research designs and methodologies that critically interrogate and disrupt these power structures. For instance, forms of inquiry that shift the focus from impersonal systems of administration to the lived experiences of people subject to the material and knowledge infrastructures of the nuclear complex. As we will discuss in more detail later in this commentary, our theorization of nuclear paternalism builds on scholarship utilizing the concepts of militarism, masculinity, patriarchy, and paternalism as critical lenses to explore the power dynamics, ethical implications, and social consequences inherent in nuclear technologies.3

In her work on the intersection of nuclear infrastructures and apocalyptic nuclear social imaginaries, literary scholar Jessica Hurley invites people to consider how perceptual modes of inquiry shape what is seen, felt, and made knowable about nuclear worlds.4 Rather than focusing only on the apocalyptic bomb moment, Hurley examines the “nuclear mundane”—the everyday, material impacts of nuclear infrastructures.5 Her work reveals how these systems not only generate environmental hazards (like nuclear waste) but also reinforce racialized and settler-colonial logics. This perspective challenges the dominant narrative of ‘nuclear’ as a singular, isolated event, highlighting instead how it is interwoven with the present-day distribution of risk and privilege. Our collaborative research builds on Hurley’s scholarship in asserting that drawing connections across mundane, everyday encounters with the nuclear complex is essential for disrupting nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism—processes that are often obscured by dominant narratives that isolate distinct nuclear ‘things’ (e.g., nuclear weapons, nuclear energy reactors, or uranium mines) rather than trace the processes that connect them.

As we will discuss throughout this commentary, our ongoing collaboration has allowed us to move beyond the limitations of working individually, creating space to analyze our experiences and ethnographic observations together. Through this process, we have been able to theorize and map the long-standing strategies of nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism that link our distinct research contexts. For instance, our collaboration has helped us with deepening our understanding of nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism as distinct, but interconnected material and ideological processes. While our definitions are always evolving, in this paper we use the term nuclear imperialism to describe a strategy in which governments and corporations expand and sustain an empire through any use of the nuclear complex.6 We use the term nuclear colonialism to refer to the systematic targeting of Indigenous peoples and their lands and waters as the sites and waste sinks to sustain nuclear production processes.7 In this way, it is possible to interrogate how the beneficiaries of nuclear imperialism might employ nuclear colonialism as a strategy to achieve empire maintenance and expansion.8 It is also possible to interrogate how nuclear paternalism works alongside nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism to sustain and expand the global nuclear complex.

Our approach challenges the limitations of purely technocratic or reformist analyses of nuclear technologies and their social and environmental consequences by centering the relational modes that produce and normalize uranium-fueled nuclear technologies and their waste. In doing so, we foreground how stories—both those told and those suppressed—actively shape nuclear governance, knowledge, and resistance. By prioritizing nuclear production processes over isolated nuclear artifacts, our collaborative scholarship aligns with critical feminist nuclear studies in its commitment to more transformative and justice-oriented approaches to nuclear scholarship.9

We begin the commentary by introducing our research collaboration before discussing the role our collaboration has played in supporting us to continue our work as critical nuclear scholars in the face of nuclear paternalism. We then describe two key dimensions that have shaped our collaborative research endeavor: the ongoing process of negotiating our “contingent collaboration”10 and the necessary time invested in continuously articulating and refining our shared theory of change.11 We conclude with a brief reflection and provide details on where readers can learn more about our work and potentially join us and others in collectively confronting nuclear imperial, colonial, and paternalistic modes of relating and their material consequences.

Our partnership is grounded in shared commitments to ethical research practices and feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis: a commitment to not perpetuate and, when possible, to disrupt and dismantle, relations of domination (e.g., sexism, racism, colonialism, and imperialism) through our research.12 Through this collaboration, we co-designed and developed maps as rigorous, multimodal research tools that challenge dominant epistemic frames surrounding the global nuclear complex. These maps serve not only as critical interventions in the representation of nuclear geographies13 but also as methodological instruments that disrupt state and industry-driven narratives and highlight nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism’s material and political dimensions.

Multimodal ethnography plays a key role in facilitating multiscalar analysis by connecting local, national, and global dimensions of the nuclear complex, which we map as nuclear infrastructures (the material infrastructures of the nuclear complex) and nuclear interventions (attempts to delimit, disrupt, or dismantle the expanding nuclear complex). The infrastructures on our maps currently include: uranium mines; uranium (re)processing facilities; nuclear weapon detonation sites; nuclear weapons states; nuclear waste ocean dumping sites; nuclear research reactors; and commercial nuclear energy reactors. The nuclear interventions currently include: the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; the 1967 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (or Treaty of Tlatelolco); the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (or London Convention); the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (or Treaty of Rarotonga); the 1996 Protocol to the London Convention (or London Protocol); and the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.14

We designed the maps to serve as an incontestable story of nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism, offering a new perspective to consider what critical scholar Lou Cornum describes as “radioactive intimacies”—a concept that explores how the violent forces of settler colonialism and imperialism intertwine, creating deep-seated, often invisible forms of harm and relationality within affected communities.15 Through visualizing the nuclear complex, our maps can provide people with a new vantage point16 from which to confront and contend with its vastness, as well as its links to nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism.

Our mapping work foregrounds the interconnectedness of extraction, production, and resistance, demonstrating how nuclear infrastructures extend across multiple scales while shaping and being shaped by transnational political-economic forces. Viewers can visualize this interconnectedness and experiment with questions of scale through engaging with the data in different ways. Each data point is linked to a date when an infrastructure joined the nuclear complex, or when an intervention emerged to shape or contest its expansion. These dates span from the early 1900s to the 2020s. Thus, it is possible to go to a particular date to see what infrastructures and interventions were existing by that point in time. It is also possible to view a video that visualizes nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism’s material expansion from the 1940s to today. By embedding relational accountability into our methodological choices, we work to ensure that the tools and strategies used to represent these interconnections remain attuned to the priorities of the communities and transversal networks engaged in contesting different aspects of the nuclear complex. This commitment is central to our feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis.

By spatializing the temporal spread and scale of the nuclear complex, the maps serve as a tool to critically engage with its expansive reach and interconnected material and ideological processes. The maps’ central assertion is that the global nuclear complex is not a collection of discrete sites but a manifold of interwoven processes that depend on sustained access to land, water, and labor. Any inquiry that isolates these elements, disassembling their interconnections, risks obscuring the broader logic of extraction, production, and governance that sustain nuclear expansion. The maps, therefore, function as a methodological intervention that resists fragmentation, making visible the continuities between uranium extraction and (re)processing, nuclear bomb detonations, nuclear research, nuclear energy production, and waste dumping, while highlighting the power relations that enable and sustain these processes. For instance, nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and, as we will address in more detail in the next section, nuclear paternalism.

Karly first came across Emily’s nuclear research in June 2021 through reading “Nuclear State, Nuclear Waste,” an interview between Emily and Professor Max Liboiron published on the Discard Studies blog in December 2018.17 As someone studying the aftermath of a nuclear energy disaster, Karly was intrigued by Emily’s attention to extractive colonialism that give states like Canada ongoing access to this so-called ‘natural resource.’ In particular, how Emily argued that such dynamics reinforce persistent economic disparities and exemplify how colonial legacies continue to shape contemporary state policies and resource distribution. Like Emily, Karly was interested in people’s experiences of everyday exposure to nuclear waste and felt challenged and invigorated by Emily’s critical insights, so reached out to see if she was interested in connecting. At the time, Emily was unable to meet due to the pressing demands of her role as a community-based applied researcher in the healthcare system during COVID-19.

When we met virtually later that year, Emily noted her surprise that it was that interview that interested Karly in her work. Emily shared how our meeting was the first time in a long while that she had engaged in a conversation about that blog post, in part due to some of the responses to that interview, which included patronizing comments. As we continued to collaborate, Emily felt comfortable sharing the comments and reflecting upon their impact and their broader implications for critical scholars in nuclear studies.

This collaborative analysis supported us in noticing connections between Karly’s and Emily’s research. Through her own nuclear scholarship, Karly had been developing the concept of nuclear gaslighting.18 While it was clear that nuclear gaslighting was present in the experiences we discussed, when we began analyzing the interview comments, we also started to notice a paternalistic undertone in the way people seemed entitled to frame Emily as ignorant and requiring education from a more authoritative figure.

For instance, many of the comments left on the interview tried to dismiss Emily’s expertise and the expertise of her interlocutors by discounting them as activists who spread “lies and distortions” about nuclear technologies.

Despite carefully positioning herself as an anthropologist examining how certain forms of discourse and contestation shape understandings of nuclear technologies, in one instance a commenter accused Emily of spreading activist-derived “myths” about these technologies and called on the blog’s editor—Professor Liboiron, a senior, established academic—to discipline and discard Emily and her critical insights.

We chose to share this story to highlight what scholars, particularly those studying nuclear contestations through critical feminist anti-colonial and decolonial paradigms, might experience when speaking publicly about their work. The same piece of work can garner great interest and disdain, which both bear real consequences for critical nuclear scholars and their scholarship. The comments also illustrate how nuclear paternalism is an affective, disciplinary force that works to delimit critical discussions about the nuclear complex, including the processes of nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism that play a role in its maintenance and expansion.

Some scholars use the term paternalism to describe the ways in which governments attempt to exert control over members of the public under the pretense that it is in their best interest.19 For example, just as a father might exert power over his children in a cis-heteronormative nuclear family. Churchill used the term nuclear paternalism to describe how the United States nuclear establishment operates according to such paternalistic presumptions: a few (often male) actors make decisions about nuclear matters on behalf of the wider public as if in their best interest, though often through conflating the desires of special interest groups with the needs of the wider public.20 Feminist scholars have long been connecting the dots between patriarchal power relations, toxic forms of masculinity, toxification, militarism, and nuclear weapons. For example, through attending to how imperial powers objectify women’s bodies in the act of detonating and domesticating nuclear weapons,21 or how defense intellectuals use sexual imagery and sexist language to discuss nuclear weapons and national security strategies.22 Acheson has contributed substantially to these discussions, pointing to dominant gendered norms, including “violent or militarized masculinities,” as cultural processes that encourage people of all genders to play a role in upholding the ideology of nuclear deterrence, as opposed to working together toward disarmament or nuclear abolition.23 Acheson also argues that gaslighting is a patriarchal strategy that plays a role in maintaining current global hierarchies (e.g., patriarchy, the dominant doctrine of nuclear deterrence) through attempting to objectify and control other people’s realities.24

Our theorization contributes to these conversations by introducing nuclear paternalism as both a concept and an analytic tool that can support scholars and community members with turning unpleasant experiences of being treated as ignorant and in need of education after raising critical questions about the nuclear complex into data—as opposed to a reason to doubt themselves and stop asking critical questions. As a concept, nuclear paternalism points to a disciplinary mode of relating that might contribute to gaslighting, though plays a specific role in drawing and holding a boundary between so-called valid and invalid forms of nuclear knowledge and critique. In other words, whether they are conscious of it or not, people who engage in nuclear paternalism are attempting to shape the conditions of possibility for what is considered a meaningful critique or assessment of the nuclear complex. This has wide-ranging impacts since nuclear paternalism’s disciplining effect constrains how researchers and the public conceptualize the nuclear complex, often privileging perspectives that align with institutional and technocratic norms over those rooted in grassroots activism or alternative epistemologies critical of nuclear states and the nuclear industry. This is seen, for example, in the ways in which scholars studying nuclear weapons do not tend to mention nuclear energy, even though they share the same infrastructures and contribute to strategies of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism.25

As an analytic tool, nuclear paternalism opens-up opportunities for researchers and community members to analyze their experiences and connect them to the experiences of others working across the vast nuclear complex. This will hopefully encourage analyses that expand on our current theorization of nuclear paternalism through, for example, sharpening our understanding of the role nuclear paternalism plays in sustaining nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism. Our hope is that our maps can support people doing these critical analyses through grounding them in the vast transnational nuclear complex and encouraging a critical mass of scholars and activists to analyze, expose, disrupt, and dismantle this disciplinary force.

In our own experience, the concept of nuclear paternalism has been useful for drawing connections across seemingly mundane experiences in which an array of people (members of the public, officials, academics, men, women) felt entitled to treat us and our interlocutors as ignorant and in need of protection from our own critical insights about nuclear issues. While the patronizing comments shared above may have focused our conversation on the topic, they represent two of many examples we experienced and observed throughout our careers studying nuclear contestations. Through collaboratively theorizing nuclear paternalism as a situated, dialectical relation, we were able to better understand that, while being treated as ignorant did not feel good, it did not have anything to do with us and our capacities as scholars.

Understanding nuclear paternalism as a dialectical relational process has been particularly helpful for our own research trajectories, supporting us with using paternalistic pushback as a generative force to refine and reconceptualize our approaches to critical nuclear scholarship. In fact, our collaborative mapping project was a direct result of our experiences and observations of nuclear paternalism, which drove us to develop a resource visualizing nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism in a way that could not be contested. In the case of our maps, this meant drawing on forms of institutional knowledge deemed ‘valid,’ such as databases held by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What we want to emphasize is how our research collaboration served as a place to theorize nuclear paternalism and as an antidote to nuclear paternalism and other attempts to manage our and our interlocutors’ critical questions about the nuclear complex. Put differently, our collaboration has provided us with the space to, in the words of the late bell hooks, engage with “[t]heory as liberatory practice”: our collaborative theorization served as a “location for healing” the isolation and irritation resulting from nuclear paternalism and other strategies to shut down critical dialogue about nuclear issues.26 We assert and expand this point through thinking with the work of STS scholar Professor Kim Fortun whose research illustrates how environmental hazards posed by late industrialism require the attention of critical scholars, and that such challenges are difficult, if not impossible, to take up as lone researchers.27 These insights ring true for our own research collaboration, which has sustained and nurtured us as critical scholars whose foci are nuclear infrastructures and contestations.

Research is always political, but so are research collaborations.28 In other words, just because collaboration may be necessary for doing critical nuclear scholarship does not make it easy. We entered into our research collaboration aware of how collaboration could support us with “staying with the trouble”29 of nuclear colonialism, nuclear imperialism, and the nuclear complex. Yet we were also very aware of the difficulties in working together across differences in place, social location, accountabilities, responsibilities, and life experiences. Not wanting to conflate or ignore these distinctions, we engage in our research collaboration intentionally, care-fully, and strategically in what Tuck and colleagues refer to as a “contingent collaboration.”30

The concept of “contingent collaborations” was introduced by Tuck and Yang31 to provide an alternative theorization for solidarity, which might allow people to overlook important distinctions that exist between social justice and decolonization projects. Instead, contingent collaborations necessarily operate according to an “ethic of incommensurability,” which requires attending to shared concerns without obfuscating distinctions.32 Yet differences in modes of justice are not the only dimensions that contribute to the importance of engaging as contingent collaborators. As Tuck and colleagues describe, even when groups come together with aligned definitions of justice, research can take place within institutional settings (e.g., universities), which operate according to colonial, and we would add imperial, logics.33 In other words, the term contingent collaboration signals that there are always distinctions that merit attention and care when working together toward a common goal.

In the context of our collaboration, working together involved continuous negotiation and enactment across various dimensions including our differing responsibilities and accountabilities, as well as the specific institutional settings within which we operate. Our different responsibilities and accountabilities not only influence how we perceive and engage with the subject matter but also shape our critical orientation toward nuclear studies. These factors also determine how we relate to the communities we study and work alongside. While differences across responsibilities, accountabilities, and perspectives enrich our collaboration, they require careful negotiation to ensure our work remains aligned and responsive to the diverse obligations tied to our communities of belonging.

A clear example of this could be seen in our decision to include nuclear interventions on the maps, which depict various transnational treaty systems used to delimit the proliferation of nuclear infrastructures. Framing and understanding this choice required extensive dialogue, highlighting the differences in our critical orientations and the distinct lenses through which we approach nuclear studies. Initially, Karly conceptualized treaties within the context of this project primarily as protective and preventative measures. However, Emily’s work on political mechanisms like treaty systems and impact benefit agreements critically examines their practical application. Her analysis reveals that, in practice, these treaties are often reduced to transactional tools that fall short of fully addressing the inherent rights of Indigenous communities. These differing perspectives required careful negotiation and ultimately enriched our collaboration and improved our maps.

Such examples illustrate that accountability in our collaboration is multi-layered, relational, and requires ongoing negotiation. We are accountable not only to the academic institutions that define our professional roles but also to the communities we belong to, work alongside, and learn from. This dual accountability often creates tension, as the priorities of academic institutions—driven by metrics of success and institutional goals—may not always align with the ethical obligations we hold. Negotiating these tensions is a continuous process, requiring constant reflection and adjustment. Such tensions need to be navigated at both the institutional interface and within the context of collaborative work, especially within collaborative projects committed to feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis.

Our responsibilities within the collaboration are fluid and often shift depending on the demands of the project, the obligations that shape our relationships with our interlocutors and communities of belonging, and the evolving nature of our research praxis. These responsibilities are further influenced by the specific roles we play within our institutions—whether as researchers, educators, or advocates—that carry their own expectations and pressures.

Moreover, the institutional settings we work within offer both affordances and limitations. These institutions provide essential resources, platforms, and legitimacy, enabling us to conduct our research and share our findings. However, they also impose constraints—whether through bureaucratic processes, funding limitations, or institutional politics—that can restrict the scope and impact of our work. Navigating these constraints requires strategic thinking and a willingness to challenge the boundaries set by institutional norms and foster solidarity across differences.

An example of this could be found in our early meetings where we discussed our interests and accountabilities—particularly to our interlocutors and communities of belonging—that drew us both to the collaborative mapping project. Staying with the trouble of our distinct situatedness, we also explored the various responsibilities, accountabilities, and limitations that constrained our ability to fully engage in the research collaboration. These constraints shaped the ways we could participate in and contribute to the project.

While Karly was able to incorporate the mapping project into her university-based research role, it quickly became clear that securing funding was essential to fully engage Emily in the collaboration. This was key since Emily’s expertise in nuclear colonialism, land-based analysis, and emplaced struggle was crucial to the project’s success. Recognizing the importance of equitable collaboration, Karly took on the responsibility of seeking funding opportunities and drafting grant proposals. Fortunately, our project was awarded one of the inaugural Critical Nuclear Weapons Scholarship Grants from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which provided the necessary support for Emily’s contributions. This funding also enabled Sonja Mueller to collaborate in transforming our ambitious visions into tangible maps.

Additionally, the funding allowed Emily to attend the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference co-organized by Karly, where our team presented the mapping project and received generative feedback from activists, organizers, and scholars working in the Pacific context on the intersections of nuclear colonialism, nuclear imperialism, and climate justice.34 This experience further strengthened our friendship and supported us to refine our collaborative approach. Ultimately, our team’s commitment to a shared goal, coupled with a careful acknowledgment and navigation of our distinctions, has been instrumental in sustaining and nourishing our research collaboration. By engaging as contingent collaborators and consciously rejecting the paternalistic dynamics often inherent in nuclear discourse, we continue to work together to cultivate an equitable and responsive collaborative process.

While our contingent collaboration involves navigating many distinctions, it is grounded and focused through a shared theory of change: that addressing the consequences of nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism will require facing an unfragmented nuclear complex through visual methods guided by collaborative feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis. While our theory of change was always driving our collaboration, we did not think to create the space to collaboratively articulate it until we heard Professor Eve Tuck mention in an October 2023 seminar that “what’s your theory of change?” was one of her favorite questions to ask people.35 Once we heard this question, we couldn’t stop thinking about how our own theory of change had been implicitly guiding our research and collaboration, whether we had explicitly acknowledged it or not.

Tuck36 challenges researchers to examine the often-implicit theories of change that shape research processes. By making these underlying assumptions explicit, Tuck encourages researchers to reflect on how theories of change influence the way a project unfolds, from defining its boundaries, to identifying the audience, to shaping epistemological assumptions and methodological choices. Such a practice of critical reflection pushes researchers to examine their taken-for-granted assumptions, urging them to interrogate the foundational structures that guide their methodological choices and approaches. She writes:

Her words remind us that articulating a collective theory of change within the scope of our collaboration required constant work and attention. Throughout our collaboration, we constantly had to ask ourselves and each other: “How do we think that change happens?”38 —especially when it comes to the emplaced, yet multiscalar impacts and consequences of nuclear infrastructures. Once we started examining our collaboration until that point, the answer became glaringly blatant. In 2022, we decided to name our virtual hub where the maps will be housed, FACING Nuclear, with the first half of the acronym representing the values guiding our praxis as critical nuclear scholars (Feminist, Anti-Colonial, anti-Imperial), and the end of the acronym representing our desire to gather others to do this work together (Nuclear Gathering).

Once we started looking, we could see our theory of change woven throughout our writing. For example, in our grant proposals we quoted James Baldwin’s famous line about needing to “face” something in order to change it, and described our desire to work together to create tools that could lead to a collective reckoning with nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism:

The question of “who is our audience”40 emerged early in our collaboration and continued to orient us across all phases of the project. It shaped our theory of change as much as our theory of change shaped it. From the outset, we considered how to scale up ethnographic modes of analysis across different contexts and places. Our goal was to provide a new perspective that would support other critical scholars grappling with how systems of power and structures influence the distribution of nuclear waste and the perpetuation of nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism. We identified four specific groups our research aimed to benefit: (1) ourselves—we felt that we needed these maps to do our critical nuclear scholarship; (2) other scholars striving to conduct critical nuclear scholarship; (3) the broader community of researchers and activists who could apply insights from the maps to their work; and, most importantly, (4) our interlocutors whose experiences and expertise guided our understanding—many of whom continue to contest nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism on the frontlines.

We knew from our research projects and scholarly work that contesting nuclear colonialism and nuclear imperialism was very challenging since efforts to shut down critical deliberation were unavoidable and difficult, if not impossible, to navigate alone. It was not only nuclear paternalism that troubled our and our interlocutors’ abilities to engage in critical discussions about the nuclear complex. We encountered the deliberate fragmentation of knowledge and datasets that complicated attempts to notice and build connections across nuclear contestations. We also knew that we did not want to hold-up damage narratives as a strategy towards transformative justice.41 As Tuck describes, “damage-centered” research is based on a theory of change that justice will come through reparations, which can only be gained through continually detailing and proving harms.42 Unfortunately, as Tuck illustrates, such an approach often further marginalizes the very communities it intends to support. As such, it did not align with our feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis that aimed to produce research outputs that could play a role in disrupting and dismantling infrastructures (both material and knowledge) that lead to oppression and domination.

Guided by a “desire-based framework,”43 we instead wanted to situate the nuclear infrastructures responsible for producing nuclear contestations in a single frame, locating them on lands and in waters to show their emplaced nature and global reach. This involved shifting the focus from merely highlighting contestations and their harms, to analyzing and challenging the broader systems of power that perpetuate these contestations and contribute to epistemic injustices such as nuclear paternalism. Our approach foregrounds the structural conditions—such as ongoing access to land, water, and labor—that sustain and exacerbate these harms. By doing so, we aimed to emphasize the agency of affected communities and their ongoing resistance, while also interrogating the roles of institutions and power structures that enable such violence. This shift from a damage-centered perspective to one that critically examines power dynamics aligns with our goal of long-term systemic change, as opposed to merely addressing immediate harms.

Engaging in critical nuclear scholarship is no easy task. As we have discussed throughout this commentary, scholars—particularly those working from feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial paradigms—often find themselves brushing up against paternalistic forces. It is not uncommon for voices critical of the impacts of nuclear technologies and the nuclear production process to be dismissed, gaslit, shamed, or silenced when they publicly share their perspective. This pushback reflects the broader challenges of confronting entrenched power structures that seek to maintain control over the narrative, making the work of critical scholarship all the more essential.

Sustaining critical nuclear scholarship will require collective efforts to identify and destabilize nuclear paternalism and other attempts to silence critique. Drawing from Donna Haraway’s concept of “staying with the trouble,”44 we recognize the value of persistently engaging with the challenges and discomforts that arise when confronting powerful institutions and entrenched ideologies. Rather than viewing the pushback as mere obstacles, we can reframe experiences of nuclear paternalism as generative forces that offer valuable insights into the power dynamics at play.

Through our commitment to staying with the trouble, we used the tensions and conflicts we encountered in our collaboration and research as catalysts for developing new ways of thinking and working together. This approach has allowed us to turn reactionary resistance into an opportunity to refine our research practices and expand the scope of our collaborative engagements, particularly in addressing the complex intersections of nuclear colonialism, nuclear imperialism, and nuclear paternalism. It has also encouraged us to create and sustain spaces where collective inquiry, creativity, and action can flourish, transforming pushback into a productive force that drives both our scholarship and our collaborative modalities forward.

In this commentary, we have provided some insights into how we have come together to form a contingent collaboration grounded in a shared theory of change: that addressing the consequences of nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism will require facing an unfragmented nuclear complex through visual methods guided by collaborative feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis. In other words, to use visual methods to cultivate our collective ability to face nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism together. After over four years of collaboration, and with immense support from funders and colleagues, we have completed the first version of our maps, which we are sharing via the FACING Nuclear virtual hub.45 Our hope is that our maps will support people to continue engaging in critical discussions about nuclear contestations and to collaboratively dismantle and envision futures beyond nuclear imperialism, nuclear colonialism, and nuclear paternalism. If you are interested in taking on this challenge, you might also be interested in joining a community addressing questions of nuclear justice, such as the FemNukes Research Network or the Nuclear Truth Project.46 We hope to meet some of you on this journey.