European Association for Japanese Studies
ヨーロッパ日本研究協会

Sébastien Penmellen Boret

International Research Institute of Disaster Sciences (IRIDeS), Tohoku University, Ass. Prof. Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Ass. Prof. Centre of Northeast Asian Studies, Research Associate

Statement

It is a great honour for me to have been nominated as a candidate for the election of the new EAJS Council starting September 2023. The EAJS meetings have been a great source of inspiration and academic motivation during my early career as a student. I was particularly attracted by the genuinely multi-disciplinary nature of the association and the counsel of many great scholars. Over the last ten years, I have been an active member of Japanese Academia through my research and teaching on bereavement, religion, demography, town planning, and ageing at Tohoku University. To serve the council, I will be able to draw from my strategic position as a European researcher based in Japan to promote and extend the influence and profile of the EAJS in Japan and East Asia. In addition, my contribution will be based on extensive experience in organising conference committees, reviewing applications for graduate programs, and serving as an associate editor for several years, reviewing several articles per week. Thus, I aim to attract and increase the participation of professional and academic Japan specialists working within and outside Europe, as well as in Japan, in EAJS conferences, meetings, PhD workshops, publication workshops, and fellowships. The prospect of being elected as a member of the EAJS Council is an invaluable opportunity to grow, mature and commit to my passion for Japanese Studies and to stimulate the excellent work of the EAJS activities and its members.

CV

Education

PhD       Oxford Brookes University, Social Anthropology               2005-11

M.Phil.   Oxford University, Social Anthropology                             2003-05

BA         Oxford Brookes University, Major in Anthropology            2000-03

Employment and professional experience           

Associate Professor, International Research Institute of Disaster, Tohoku University                      2014-present

Associate Professor, Center for North East Asian Studies, Tohoku University                                 2015-present

Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku Gakuin University                                     2015-2016

Post-Doctoral Fellow (JSPS), Faculty of Arts and Letters, Science of Religion, Tohoku University  2012-2014

Research projects and interests

Keywords: death, grief, memory, disaster and disability in France, Japan and Indonesia

Main research projects (current)

  • Managing Mass Death and Grief in Disaster Communities: Lessons Learned from Japan, Indonesia, and France
  • Disaster and Disability in Japan: Towards building a more inclusive society

Publications

Book(s)

Death in the Early Twenty-First Century: Authority, Innovation and Mortuary Rites, co-edited with Susan Orpett Long and Sergei Kan, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, Spring 2017.

Chapters and Articles

ボレー・ペンメレン・セバスチャン(2023)破壊と復興の狭間で——東日本大震災メモリアル・ランドスケープの過渡性について 災害〈後〉を生きる―慰霊と回復の災害人文学,李善姫/編高倉 浩樹/編, 新泉社, 東京, p 62-98.  ISBN 978-4-7877-2208-9.

Boret, S. P., Yu Fukuda (2021). Japanese Funerals during the Covid-19 Crisis. Handbook of Disaster Ritual: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Cases and Themes, 2021. 510-513. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN:9789042946484. 31.12.2021. Open access.

Gerster, Julia, S. P. Boret, A. Shibayama (2021). Out of the Dark: The Challenges of Branding Post-Disaster Tourism Ten Years after the Great East Japan Earthquake, EATSJ – Euro-Asia Tourism Studies Journal, Vol.2, Issue: November. Open access.

Boret, S. P. and A. Shibayama. (2018). The Roles of Monuments for the Dead during the Aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Elsevier. 29,55-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.09.021