Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies, Hokkaido University
Mayumi Okada (Ph.D., Keio University,Tokyo) is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies, Hokkaido University. She is also the Indigenous Heritage Tourism project manager at the Center, and was previously an Intern in Public Education and Outreach at National Museum of Tokyo.
Mayumi’s interests focus on ethnography, archaeological heritage management, public archaeology, and especially Indigenous cultural heritage management. She has conducted research and fieldwork in Japan, as well as in Israel.
Since Japan has not enacted any regulations to protect Ainu Indigenous culture and heritage, Mayumi is interested what can be learned from other countries where such regulations or laws related to intellectual property have already been enacted. She is also interested in the public archaeology projects that involve Indigenous people in archaeological activity, and community-based research oriented to archaeological sites (including sacred sites) and to understanding the relationship between the cultural and natural landscape.
