Our team

The Organising Team

Get to know our team of staff and student organisers

Karly Burch (she/her)

Dr Karly Burch (she/her) is a United States citizen and Aotearoa New Zealand resident currently working as a Research Fellow at the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability. Karly grew up as a settler in Hawaiʻi and has been studying nuclear issues for over twelve years. She earned a joint MSc in agroecology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and ISARA-Lyon in 2012. Karly also received a full doctoral scholarship from the University of Otago in 2015 and earned her PhD in sociology in August 2018. She was recently granted a Critical Nuclear Weapons Scholarship Grant from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) alongside her collaborators Emily Simmonds and Sonja Mueller. The grant is funding collaborative research for the academic paper, “What are the nuclear futures we want? Anticolonial mapping as a tool to imagine Indigenous and settler futures beyond nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism,” which will be presented at the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference. Karly is currently working on a book manuscript titled Eating a Nuclear Disaster: Food, Science and Silence After Fukushima Daiichi. Based on Karly’s PhD scholarship, the manuscript situates food safety contestations in the aftermath of the 2011 Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster within wider nuclear imperial and nuclear colonial infrastructures and power relations. Karly enjoys engaging in inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations and mentoring emerging scholars.

Jamie Cave (she/her)

Jamie Cave (she/her) is originally from Ōtautahi Christchurch and currently undertaking a coursework Master of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Jamie received the 2022 Master of Peace and Conflict Studies Study Award. Her dissertation focuses on dimensions of trust in the context of European refugee reception and Jamie is volunteering for the Red Cross Pathways to Settlement programme this year. She is a JENESYS (AFS Intercultural Programs) and MEXT scholar, having completed a Bachelor of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University in Japan where she volunteered in leadership roles for the AFS Kansai Regional Chapter. Since age 15, representing New Zealand as a Student Goodwill Ambassador to Christchurch’s sister city Kurashiki, Jamie has continued to hold strong links to Japan. She is a New Zealand registered early childhood teacher and 2022 AFS Youth Assembly delegate.

Mino Cleverley (he/him)

Mino Cleverley (he/him) is a New Zealand born Samoan. He is a PhD student at the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago, where his thesis focuses on indigenous responses to climate change and forced retreat due to sealevel rise. Mino postulates that climate change is ‘slow violence’, being harm and damage that is sufferred over years, decades and even longer. Nuclearism is another form of colonialist violence in Oceania, where the insidious consequences of nuclear testing and waste storage by the Global North persist and continue to cause harm to the indigenous inhabitants through no fault of their own. Mino has a strong affinity for education and the empowerment of individuals and underserved communities. He is a strong advocate for supporting marginalised people and communities, especially giving voice to peoples of Oceania.

Matt Fuller (he/him)

Matt Fuller (he/him) was originally born in Virginia USA, and attended the College of William & Mary for a BA in International Relations, and American University for an MA in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs. He is now a PhD student at the University of Otago where his thesis focuses on the campaign to ban Depleted Uranium. Between his MA and PhD, he was the Programme Assistant at the Corrymeela Peace and Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland, a video editor for the Democracy Development Programme in South Africa, and a Lecturer at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas.

Ashley Macmillan (she/her)

Ashley (she/her) is originally from Perth, in Western Australia, and prior to moving to Dunedin to undertake her PhD, she was working as a social worker with Housing First, in Auckland. She has also previously worked on: activist campaigns with Amnesty International Australia; as a community organiser; with vulnerable youth; with asylum seekers; and with rough sleepers. Ashley’s research is focused on community-based conflict prevention, which she terms Proactive Peace Work. Her research has a specific focus on how communities foster peace and address conflict risk-factors before any violence is able to occur. So often, peace-work is not looked at until after violence has started. This research seeks to highlight the successful preventative work that is happening all the time, with a view to understanding how it can be strengthened.

Kalika Kastein (she/they)

Kalika (she/they) is an educator, peace researcher, and visual media specialist as well as a queer and non-binary third-generation Estonian-American. Currently, Kalika is a PhD candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago. Kalika's PhD research started in 2020, funded through the University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship, and focuses on understanding forms of silence in peace and conflict studies. Kalika became a certified teacher in Hawaiʻi, and earned a Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins University. Kalika holds a Master of Arts in Peace Studies from International Christian University in Japan which was funded by the Rotary Peace Fellowship.

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