Vincent Ialenti

Anthropologist, 2021-22 Berggruen Fellow

Vincent Ialenti is an Assistant Research Professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University. His new book, Deep Time Reckoning (MIT Press), is an ethnographic study of how Finland’s nuclear waste repository “safety case” experts grapple with distant future ecosystems and the limits of imagination. Vincent’s research on nuclear waste expert culture has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, and The MacArthur Foundation. He has published in Social Studies of ScienceThe Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteNuclear TechnologyScience & Technology StudiesPhysics Today, and The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Alongside his scholarly work, Vincent has written several articles for NPR, the BBC, Forbes, Nautilus, and other public outlets. As a USC Berggruen Fellow, he will develop—in collaboration with The Long Now Foundation—a toolkit for nurturing societal time literacy, and for envisioning more long-termist, multi-temporal systems of governance.

By Vincent Ialenti

Berggruen Fellows Aim to Reinvent Governance, Imagine Radically Different Futures for Global Systems and Institutions

Drum Breach: Typo Politics, Wildfire Futures, and WIPP’s Kitty Litter Nuclear Waste Accident