Dr. Yoshimi Nishi, associate professor of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at Kyoto University, has been awarded the 2025 Daido Life Foundation Incentive Award for Area Studies in recognition of “contributing to new development in the field of area studies, and is expected to achieve further success.”
The award-winning research is titled “Interdisciplinary Area Studies on Social Change and Reconstruction after Earthquake and Tsunami Disasters in Aceh Province, Indonesia, during Civil War.”
Please click here to view the message video by Associate Professor Nishi, and also the selection committee’s introduction of her achievements.
From the recipient
I am deeply honored to receive this prestigious award in area studies, which will be a great encouragement for my future research.
My research has focused on Aceh, Indonesia, where I study how communities affected by disasters and conflict transform and rebuild their social fabric. In doing so, I have sought to illuminate the socio-spatial configurations and local specificities of these places from perspectives immanent in those communities.
In particular, after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, I collaborated with experts in humanitarian aid, media, and disaster risk reduction who worked in Aceh, translating and sharing on-the-ground knowledge to explore how information about affected areas could be made visible and useful to the public. Through these interdisciplinary projects, I have gained a deep appreciation for the role of informatics in area studies and for partnerships with local experts.
This award recognizes the interdisciplinary nature of my work, the community-engaged collaborations in Japan and Indonesia to support the intergenerational transmission of disaster memories, and the advancement of informatics within area studies. These achievements have been made possible by dialogue and cooperation with local communities, researchers, and practitioners across fields.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported me. I will continue to deepen my scholarship, respond flexibly to increasingly complex social issues, and work in close partnership with society. — Yoshimi Nishi
