I am a German-based anthropologist specializing in visual culture, the politics of representation in Latin America, and the relationship between Japanese colonialism and the evolution of ethnology in East Asia. In December 2023, I defended my Ph.D. dissertation in socio-cultural anthropology at Heidelberg University. I am currently preparing my dissertation for publication.
In my next research project, I plan to examine the politics of knowledge production within the emerging field of anthropology in colonial Taiwan. The project centers on the intellectual exchange between Japanese anthropologists and their Western counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region during the pre-war period. It builds on my previous work at the Department of Anthropology at National Taiwan University, which was originally established in 1928 as Taihoku Imperial University. My work was part of a digital humanities initiative to make photographs and films made by Japanese anthropologists available to Indigenous source communities.
During my doctoral studies in the Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University, I worked on the intersections of photography, trans-Pacific migration, and historical narrative. My dissertation portrays the life and work of the Japanese-Guatemalan photographer Yasu Kōhei (屋須弘平, Juan José de Jesús Yas, 1846–1917) and traces the contemporary significance of his photography in Japan and Guatemala.
I also hold an M.A. in anthropology from National Taiwan University. My master’s thesis is based on fieldwork conducted in a small town near La Paz, Bolivia and explores the politics of identity and the representation of Indigenous women.
Doctoral Research Project (defended December 2023)
Fotografía Japonesa in Guatemala: Transcultural Visuality and the Migrant Biography of Yasu Kōhei
Postdoctoral Research (September 2024, working title)
The Politics of Scholarship and Knowledge: Trans-Imperial Exchange between Japanese Anthropologists and Their European and North American Counterparts
