N.A.J. Taylor joined the Earth System Governance Project in 2013 as a Research Fellow. As at March 2025 he is a Chancellor’s Research Fellow at The University of Technology Sydney.
His areas of specialisation are International Ethics and Environmental Philosophy, which he investigates via the problem of nuclear harm. His first major contribution to the theory and practice of Environment and Governance was recognised in 2007, when UniSuper—Australia’s university pension scheme—awarded him the inaugural prize for ethical and responsible investment research where the panel of judges noted my “pioneering role” which “may have single-handedly debunked any residual concerns […] and could fundamentally change how [legislators and trustees] now tackle this subject”.
Taylor’s current major research project, Australian nuclear stewardship of radioactive wastes, aims to evaluate and transform Australian nuclear stewardship of radioactive wastes consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which demands “free, prior and informed consent”. Co-designed with the First Nations-led project partner, the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (est. 1997), the project investigates international best practice in siting both low- and high-level radioactive waste repositories and generates new knowledge on a time-critical debate in environmental and Indigenous-Settler relations using innovative decolonising methodologies such as Indigenous-led scoping studies, self-determined community outputs, and agonistic dialogue. This should provide significant benefits to communities most affected by, or at risk of, radioactive waste siting processes. It is hoped the project will contribute a thoroughgoing nuclear waste repository case study of central importance to the ESG Project’s Science and Implementation Plan, namely the “justice and allocation” and “anticipation and imagination” research lenses and all of four of its contextual conditions: transformations, inequality, Anthropocene (esp. human-nature relations), and diversity.