Dr Yasuko Kobayashi

She specialises in inter-Asian and Pacific migration/mobilities, and her research covers both historical migration and contemporary migration issues. 

Her current historical migration project is Japanese POWs in Papua New Guinea during and after WWII.  She was recently awarded a research grant by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for a project entitled “Soldiers as mobile subjects: Japanese POWs Experiences in PNG during and after WWII” (Funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science). 

Her contemporary migration research project is disaster and immigrants, and she has recently been awarded a research grant by Murata Science Foundation for her collaborative project with Associate Professor Hitomi Nakanishi (University of Canberra) entitled “Comparative research on disaster prevention framework in multicultural and multi-ethnic society and its application to Japan”.

She is also co-investigator of the National Research Foundation of Korea funded project, “Mobility Humanities based on the Co-Evolution of Human Being and Technologies: Worlding the Human-Mobility Societies in the Future” under the scheme of “Humanities Korea Plus program” and hosted in Konkuk University, Korea.

Inter-Asia and the Pacific Migration and Mobilities, Migration and Disasters, Inter-Asian Labour Migration, Japan and Australian Transnational Connections during WWII, War and Mobilities/Migration, Minorities in Asia and the Pacific, Postcolonial Studies