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I am a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. I am currently in (or around) Austin, Texas conducting fieldwork for my dissertation on the science and politics of transitioning to renewable energy resources in Austin, Texas. I have helped design and undertake geographically dispersed and collaborative PECE projects that have investigated toxic subjects and places, transnational sts, and quotidian anthropocenes. I can be reached by email at jradams1@uci.edu.

I am also a part of the Energy in COVID-19 Research Group that is a thematic subgroup of the larger Transnational STS COVID-19 Project. In this group we focus on how energy consumption, services, production, and futures have been impacted by the current pandemic.

The transnational STS COVID-19 project also intersects with my work at the level of city-scale questions pertaining to how COVID-19 related policies and practices are impacting and influencing strategies and processes of political engagement.  Accordingly, out of the project-wide analytic, I have been focusing on the following questions:

How is ‘social distancing’ practiced and interpreted in different COVID-19 settings?

How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?

The Tribute to the Mallinckrodt Uranium Workers is perhaps the most reflexive display in the Interpretive Center at Weldon Springs. By listing the names of the Mallinckrodt employees and acknowledging their sacrifices, the tribute at least intimates how the toxic process of uranium refinement, including the secrecy and deceit that surrounded it, impacted the lives of the local community. And yet, given the juxtaposition of the exhibit next to the "Timeline of the Nuclear Age" and an encompassing display on "The Process" of refinement, the critical nuance of this quotidian, human level is muddled by both the macro events of history and the micro details of scientific practice. It is also worth noting that in the online tour of the exhibit, the purpose and the meaning of the tribute bears no mention all. An image of the arch is provided, but not a single bit of context as to what it signifies. Instead, what we are given access to is only the timeline, the process description, and a romanticized version of the Mallinckrodt story taken from a tour guide that was written in 1959.