Astrid Mignon Kirchhof & Jan-Henrik Meyer: Global Protest against Nuclear Power. Transfer and Transnational Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s [Abstract]

Protest against nuclear power plants, uranium mining and nuclear testing was a major mobilizing force in the rise of mass environmental movements in the 1970s and 1980s around the globe. Nevertheless, the historiography of anti-nuclear protest remains largely limited to national stories about heroic conflict and the rise of movements. The contributions to this focus issue explore the so far under-researched transnational dimension of the conflict in a global perspective. They make visible for the first time relevant transfers of scientific knowledge and protest practices as well as transnational exchange between activists and experts from Western Europe, the United States and Australia. Rather than taking transnational interaction for granted, the authors explore the conditions facilitating and hampering the transfer of ideas. They analyse why only certain activists were committed and able to cross borders, as well as the obstacles they were facing. Thus, this focus issue contributes to current academic debates in environmental history, the history of social movements as well as global and transnational history.