N.A.J. Taylor
Download CV︎


As a political and ethical theorist I explore human-nature relations via the prism of the nuclear age.
           My current project, sponsored by Deakin University and The University of British Columbia, approaches the Australian nuclear fuel cycle as future cultural and environmental heritage. Other recent projects include an archival research fellowship at The University of Queensland that sought to (re)construct the nuclear ethics and politics of the pioneering environmental philosopher Richard Sylvan, and an Australian Academy of the Humanities fellowship that is cataloguing and digitising materials relating to the world’s first two nuclear photographers—Berlyn Brixner and Yoshito Matsushige—that are held by the Atomic Photographers Guild, for whom I also serve on the advisory board.
            Prior to holding these research-only appointments, I taught for thirteen years in Australia and the United States. Initially drawing on my experience as an award-winning applied ethicist in the pension and sovereign wealth fund industry, I began by teaching environmental, social and governance risks at a Graduate School of Management. More recently, I designed and delivered courses at the cultural interface of Australian aboriginal and settler environmental philosophies that drew, in part, from my earlier work on the extractive industries.
            The impulse for my sustained interest in human-nature relations is documented in several published works of narrative and visual auto-ethnography—from a prize-winning article of field philosophy, to a series of essays that work through various familial traumas, and a monograph of my partner’s pre- and post-pregnancy paintings and drawings.
            I live and work on Gulidjan land and waters, with my partner and daughters.