Tina Talleraas isa Visiting Research Fellow at the Program on Science, Technology & Society (STS) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a PhD candidate at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Culture at the University of Oslo. Tina’s research interests lie in the interface between science and policy, especially relating to the politics of expertise, civic epistemologies, and risk governance. Her PhD project deals with these issues in relation to current debates over nuclear weapons, specifically in connection with what has become known as the “Humanitarian Initiative” in international disarmament circles.

In her work, Tina explores how the Humanitarian Initiative has been built up around a range of scientific spokespeople navigating between scientific and political roles of influence. Her research sheds light on the strategic involvement of boundary actors in the construction of a political intervention. While traditional explanations of nuclear weapons tend to operate with deterministic conceptions about how the technology works, the discussions surrounding the Humanitarian Initiative refute the idea that nuclear weapons can ever be “black-boxed” into stable operations. Tina’s research explores the incongruences as well as potentials brought forward by the Humanitarian Initiative and highlights the need for a more empirical approach in dealing with nuclear policy and security.

Tina received her MA in Society, Science, and Technology from the University of Oslo. Her thesis was written on the topic of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan and explored the differing ways in which the Nordic embassies in Tokyo chose to respond to the situation, demonstrating the contextual and interpretive nature of nuclear risk assessment. Tina also holds an MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and Political Science.