I am a sociocultural anthropologist and have been conducting research on various aspects of aging and the care of older people in Japan since 2005.

In 2015 I was awarded an Enhancing Life Project Early Career Award to conduct ethnographic research on the meanings of family caregiving and the experience of compassion in the UK and Japan. This research has now been published as a book, titled Fragile Resonance: Caring for older family members in Japan and England (Cornell University Press, 2022).

My current research project was funded by an SSRC Abe Fellowship, and focuses on the lives of formerly incarcerated older people in Japan. It also looks at the role of third-sector organizations in providing support for older people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, and who are often isolated and estranged from kin or community relations.

 

Fieldwork Experience

Major projects, 2005-201

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

Comparison of older ex-offender resettlement and community-based organizations for reducing recidivism in Japan and the United Kingdom

Research Dates: 2018-2019
Funding Source: Social Science Research Council Abe Fellowship

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

Making Care Meaningful: Coherence, Worldview, and Burnout among Family Caregivers of Older Adults in Contemporary Urban Japan

 Research Dates: 2013-2015
Funding Source: Japan Society for Promotion of Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship; John Templeton Foundation Enhancing Life Early Career Award; Oxford Brookes Faculty Research Grant
 

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

(photo credit Jason Danely, do not reproduce without permission)

"No Room for the Old or the Altar"?: Aging and Spirit Memorial in Contemporary Urban Japan

Research Dates: 2005-2014

Funding Sources: IIE Fulbright Grant, UC Pacific Rim Mini-Grant, UW Milwaukee Center on Age and Community Postdoctoral Fellowship

FULL CV IN PDF HERE

academic appointments


Oxford Brookes University
2014-

Reader in Anthropology of Japan

Teaching

  • Introduction to Japanese Culture and Society

  • Reading Contemporary Ethnography

  • Personhood, Gender and the Body in Japan

  • Minorities and Marginality: class and conflict in Japan

  • Culture and Care


Rhode Island College
2011-2014

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and affiliate of Gerontology
Member of the Institutional Review Board.

Teaching

  • Cultural Anthropology

  • Medical Anthropology

  • Anthropology of Religion

  • Anthropology of Aging