Speakers

Holly M. Barker, PhD

Teaching Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Washington
Commissioner, Republic of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission

Dr. Holly Barker served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where she lived on an outer island for two years teaching in an elementary school. Following Peace Corps, Dr. Barker served as an advisor to the RMI’s Ambassador to the U.S. at the RMI Embassy in Washington, D.C. Her primary duty at the Embassy was to prepare Marshallese leaders to advance their agendas with the U.S. government. While working at the Embassy, a position she held for 17 years, Dr. Barker attended graduate school at American University, earning an M.A. in International Education and a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology working closely with American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. 

Dr. Barker’s research activities emerge from a request by the RMI Government to document Marshallese understandings about the damages and injuries resulting from the U.S. nuclear weapons testing program. The fieldwork for her first book, Bravo for the Marshallese, includes interviews from communities downwind from the detonation sites, both those recognized by the U.S. government as impacted by U.S. weapons tests, and those exposed to radiation, but outside the boundaries of current U.S. legal responsibilities.

Dr. Barker’s second book, Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report, co-authored with Barbara Rose Johnston, describes the anthropological methodology to document Rongelap’s cultural harms to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal (established by Congress to adjudicate claims emerging from U.S. nuclear weapons testing) as well as the first-hand experiences of the Rongelap community. The Tribunal awarded $1 billion to the Rongelap community for land damages, including $35 million for the consequential damages outlined in the book.

Since 2001, Dr. Barker has focused her scholarship and teaching at the University of Washington on nuclear justice. She teaches several courses, including “Surfacing the Stories of Hanford: Local and Global Health Disparities” and “From SpongeBob to Godzilla: Popular Culture and Nuclear Coloniality,” and runs research cohorts for students interested in nuclear justice. Dr. Barker received her university’s highest teaching award for her pedagogies building the leadership and research skills of students from communities impacted by the nuclear legacy. 

In 2018, the RMI Government appointed Dr. Barker to be one of three commissioners on the RMI National Nuclear Commission. She received honorary citizenship from the Nitijela of the Marshall Islands in 2022 for her decades of advocacy on the nuclear legacy.