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Prof. Dr. Dieter Georg Adlmaier-Herbst is an internationally renowned expert in digital communication and branding. He is scientific director of the Berlin Management Model for Digitization (BMM) at Berlin Career College at the University of the Arts Berlin. He is a guest professor at the Latvian Cultural Academy and lecturer in global executive MBA programs at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He was elected Professor of the Year (2012) by UNICUM and KPMG. He is a member of the Council of Internet Sages and has written 23 books to date.

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Rosa Caroli is a professor of Japanese History in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main field of research is the evolution of Japan’s modern state with particular regard to identitarian discourses on both the nation and its peripheries. She has written extensively about Okinawan and, more recently, Edo-Tokyo history. In 2009 she received the Higa Shuncho Prize of the Society for the Research on Okinawa Culture. An author of various books and articles, she is visiting researcher at Waseda University and Hosei University.

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Susan Ellicott is a British-born writer, film maker, television journalist, communications professional, and founder of a food business in London. Her lifelong passions are cooking, eating, and reporting on seasonal food and its producers. Susan grew up next to a farm in Cornwall, England. Her career has allowed her to travel extensively, including two trips to Japan, where she fell in love with Japanese artisan culture. She has visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Kobe, Hakodate, Takamatsu, and islands in the Inland Sea. Her dream is to spend a full year in Japan to experience the country’s cuisine in all four seasons.

Rupert Faulkner was Senior Curator in the Asian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) until his retirement at the end of May 2021. Born in Yokohama and educated in Britain, he graduated from Cambridge University in 1977 with a degree in Japanese Studies. He spent the following seven years, three of them in the Archaeology Department of Nagoya University, conducting research into Japanese ceramic history. His doctoral thesis on the development of Seto and Mino ceramics from the 12th to 17th century was accepted by Oxford University in 1988. He joined the V&A in 1984 and was involved in preparations leading to the opening of the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art in December 1986. During his time at the V&A he was responsible in particular for the care, development, and study of the museum’s collections of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Japanese ceramics, and contemporary Japanese crafts. In 1995 he curated the exhibition Japanese Studio Crafts: Tradition and the Avant-Garde and published an accompanying book of the same title. In 2001-2002 he was joint coordinator of the V&A’s programme of Japan 2001 events. He subsequently acted as curatorial consultant for the Japanese section of the V&A’s International Arts and Crafts exhibition held in 2005 and co-managed a major Anglo-Japanese collaborative lacquer conservation project focusing on the Mazarin Chest, a spectacular example of early 17th century Japanese lacquer made for export to Europe. He also worked closely on the refurbishment and redisplay of the V&A’s top-floor ceramics galleries, which opened in two stages in September 2009 and June 2010. He was instrumental in the development of the Mazarin Chest Gallery Interactive launched in November 2013 and was Lead Curator for the upgrade and redisplay of the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, which reopened to the public in November 2015. In 2014 he was awarded the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for his role in promoting the understanding of Japanese culture in the United Kingdom, and in 2020 received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays from the Japanese Government.

Michael Dylan Foster is a Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (2015), Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai (2009), and numerous articles on Japanese folklore, literature, and media. He is also the co-editor of The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (2016) and UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage (2015).

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Flavia Fulco is an Italian researcher based in Tokyo since 2011. She is currently a Visiting JSPS Post-Doctoral Fellow at Sophia University where she is conducting research within the project ’Voices from Tohoku’ at the Institute of Comparative Culture. The focus of her research is on cultural practices related to the memorialization of 3.11 disaster. She is interested in interdisciplinary and comparative approach between Social Sciences and Humanities.

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Alice Gordenker is a writer and travel-industry consultant based in Tokyo, where she has lived for more than 20 years. She is certified by the Japan Tourism Agency as an expert consultant and has served since 2016 as a special adviser to the San’in Tourism Agency. Ms. Gordenker has a special interest in introducing lesser known destinations in Japan to visitors from other countries and works actively with local governments and tourism boards in many different regions of Japan.

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Doctor of Arts of Aalto University, University Professor (emerita), and fashion and clothing designer. Over the years, she has been studying and developing user-based clothing design, functional clothing, sustainability and responsibilities of designers. Between 2009 – 2017 Heikkilä-Rastas led joint workshops at the University of Lapland in cooperation with Yamaguchi Prefectural University and professor Yumiko Mizutani. She also exhibited at Arctic Design Week and participated in Super Global Workshops and fashion shows in Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture in 2016 – 2017. Most recently, she led a research trip to Yamaguchi in April 2019.

As an architect and educator, Kanda Shun is interested in the dynamics of the nature of place, architecture, and city form – the way people build, inhabit and ultimately sustain meaningful societies. The theme of ’Continuity and Transformation in Architecture & Community Form’ defines his professional and academic work. He has been the Director of the MIT Japan Design Workshop since 1990, the Veneto Experience_italia since 2004, and the international Advanced Design Workshops (i_ADW) since ?YEAR?. He directed the MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative throughout its course from 2011-2016. His long teaching career includes many years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1979-2014) and other schools in the US and Japan. Kanda is Principal of Kanda Associates Architects Inc. of Cambridge, MA. He holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. A native of Tokyo, he resides in Boston and often sojourning elsewhere on the globe.

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Simon Kaner is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of Japan. He is Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia, and Head of the Center for Archaeology and Heritage as well as being Executive Director at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. Since 2005, he has been a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, teaching and publishing on various aspects of East Asian and European archaeology. His notable publications include a 2009 catalog for ’The Power of Dogu: Ceramic Figures from Ancient Japan’, a major exhibition at the British Museum that subsequently transferred to the Tokyo National Museum and ’An Illustrated Companion to Japanese Archaeology’ (Archaeopress) in 2016.

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Clara Kumagai is a writer, editor, and lecturer. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in Ireland, Japan, Canada, and the US. She currently lives in Tokyo, where shelectures in Tsuda University and Tama Art University. She is from Ireland, Canada, and Japan.

Barak Kushner is an award-winning Professor of East Asian History in the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has a Ph.D. in History from Princeton and has written three monographs: Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (2015), (Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2016 John K. Fairbank Prize); Slurp! A culinary and social history of ramen - Japan’s favorite noodle soup (2012); and The Thought War - Japanese Imperial Propaganda (2006).

Dr. Kushner began his career as a high school teacher of social studies in Chicago and later traveled to Iwate, Japan, where he taught English, lived in a Buddhist temple, and attended Japanese elementary school, studying Japanese along with other students ages 6-12. Kushner’s work has been the focus of numerous articles in the major Japanese presses. He also appeared in the popular Japanese television variety show The World’s Amazing Discoveries! (世界ふしぎ発見) in their special Chase! Run around the World (追跡! 世界を駆け巡る), as a guest on several BBC radio broadcasts, and has been interviewed for various film documentaries around the world.

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Christina Laffin is a specialist of premodern Japanese literature. She serves as the Canada Research Chair in Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture and is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. She received her MA at the University of Tokyo and her PhD at Columbia University. Her research interests include literature by women, travel writing, and poetry. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

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Paul Martin is one of the leading Japanese sword experts based in Japan. He is a former curator in the Japanese section at the British Museum in London. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies (Japan) from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a trustee for the Nihonto Bunka Shinko Kyokai Public Foundation (NBSK). Additionally, he is a designated Bunka Meister (Master of Culture) for Hongan-ji Temple’s (Kyoto) cultural organization, the Japonisme Shinko Kai, and a recognized specialist by the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). He dedicates himself to preserve and promote Japanese swords.

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Regine Mathias studied Japanese History and History at Ruhr-University Bochum and Kyushu University, Japan. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna with a thesis on the development of wage labor in Japanese coal mines. She taught at several universities and worked as a professor of Japanese History at Ruhr-University Bochum from 1996 to 2016. Since her retirement, she has been working at the Centre Européen d’Études Japonaises d’Alsace (CEEJA). Her main field of research is Japanese social and economic history, with a focus on mining and labor history. She has published on labor in Japanese coal-mines, Japanese mining picture scrolls and their value as historical sources as well as on German-Japanese relations and gendered working patterns in pre-war Japan.

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Harriet Natsuyama received a Doctor of Science degree in Astrophysics from Kyoto University. She is an alumna of the University of Hawaii in physics. She has authored six scholarly books and 200 papers. Dr. Natsuyama has had a career in both industry and academia. She serves on the Board of Advisors and is Visiting Scholar at Kanayama Research Center. She is pursuing her interests in researching megalithic astronomy, Woshite language, and other esoteric subjects. These interests have brought the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous Japan to her attention, and she proactively promotes this view of Japan to the West.

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Eric Pauer received his doctorate at the University of Vienna. He taught Japanese Studies at the Universities of Vienna, Bonn and Marburg, where he was Director of the Center for Japanese Studies for many years. His vocational training prior to his studies made him concentrate his scientific research on the historical development of Japanese technology, including economic and general history. He spent many years in Japan, where he made several excursions to the Chugoku region to research the traditional iron industry. After his retirement in 2008, he and his wife set up a Japan Library at the Centre Européen d’Etudes Japonaises d’Alsace (CEEJA) in Alsace, France. A collection of about 100,000 books, dozens of current periodicals, mostly in Japanese, and a special collection of woodblock printing books of the Edo period, the so-called Edo bunko, offer interested researchers from nearby France, Germany, and Switzerland the opportunity to study various Japanese topics.

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Dr. Ewa Pałasz-Rutkowska, is a full professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She is a graduate in Japanese Studies from the same university, where she also earned her doctorate and post-doctoral degrees (doctor habilitatus) in humanities. She has made numerous visits to Japan in connection with her studies, mainly at the University of Tokyo – also as visiting professor, and at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. Her research interests are the history, mainly modern, and culture of Japan, the history of Polish-Japanese relations, the history of the Imperial Household of Japan, and cross-cultural studies.

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Sophie Richard is a freelance art historian based in London. She was educated at the Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne, Paris. She has travelled to Japan many times over the past twelve years and has written articles that have been published in the UK and the USA.

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Karin Schierhold is an architect, urban designer and community planner. As a professional she is engaged in work related to the urban public space and the architecture of commercial buildings and multi-family housing. Her experience also includes research in the area of public realm and community development. She has conducted city planning research in Mumbai, India, as a Fulbright grant recipient and has participated in the research and design of housing developments in Japan as member of the MIT Advanced Japan Design Workshop. Karin holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She resides in Washington, DC.

Anton Schweizer received his doctor’s degree in art history from the University of Heidelberg. He is an art historian and specializes in the transition from the Medieval to Early modern periods (ca. 1500-1800). His research centers on the employment of artifacts in space, thus spanning site planning, architectural design, and ornamentation as well as ’temporary’ types of furnishing and interior decoration. Anton Schweizer works also on depictions of architecture in painting, and on object cultures in the widest sense – including the movements of objects around the globe, gift exchanges, and practices of intentional fragmentation, repurposing, and repair.

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Timon Screech is a specialist in the art and culture of early modern Japan. He is a professor of the History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS, University of London. Graduated from University of Oxford in Oriental Studies (Japanese) in 1985, Dr. Screech completed his PhD in Art History at Harvard University in 1991. He has since been at SOAS, while having served as a professor at the University of Chicago, and guest researcher at Gakushuin University and Waseda University in Tokyo. He is currently a visiting professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo.

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Ashley Strachan is by profession a precision mechanical design engineer. Now retired, his later occupation was as Head of Special Projects in corporate business management, however, in his spare time he retained an enthusiasm for all things mechanical. A clock and watch collector and restorer, he is Chairman of the British Horological Institute Museum Trust. Over the last five years he has specialised in wadokei and given several talks on the subject within the UK.

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Tokita Alison is a musicologist and Japanologist. She taught Japanese Studies and Japanese language at Monash University for many years. From 2010 to 2018 she had positions at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Doshisha University, and Kyoto City University of Arts, where from 2014 to 2018 she was Director of the Research Centre for Japanese Traditional Music. Her primary research focus is Japanese story-singing traditions. She also researches musical modernity in Japan in a comparative context. She is the recipient of the 33rd Tanabe Hisao Prize (2015), the 28th Koizumi Fumio Music Prize (2016), and the Kyoto Newspaper Prize (Academic) (2016).

Dr Nadine Willems, a Belgian national, worked in media and business in Tokyo for more than fifteen years before returning to academia in 2008. She obtained her PhD in History from the University of Oxford in 2015 and joined the University of East Anglia as lecturer in Japanese history in 2016. She specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of modern Japan. She has written about early twentieth-century revolutionary connections between Europe and East Asia, and the development of the discipline of geography in Japan. Her research interests extend to the history of ethnography, farmers’ movements and proletarian and modernist literature. She recently translated and edited, ’Kotan Chronicles: Selected Poems, 1928-1943’, a volume of poetry by Hokkaido-based poet and activist Sarashina Genzo (Isobar Press, 2017).

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