Rate My Professor Iori Hamada

Dr. Iori Hamada serves as Lecturer in Japanese Studies within the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. As an award-winning social anthropologist, her research, education, and engagement integrate critical pedagogy, migration studies, and gender studies to explore the lived experiences of structurally vulnerable communities—particularly youth, skilled migrants, and women—across Australia and Asia. Recognized as a leading scholar in Australia-Japan intercultural studies, Hamada collaborates closely with community, policy, and industry partners to critically analyze everyday intercultural realities and co-design innovative, community-driven solutions. Her work directly contributes to Monash University’s Impact 2030 strategic pillars of 'Inclusive Communities' and 'Thriving Societies'.

Hamada’s scholarship is structured around three interconnected strands: first, examining structural vulnerabilities in post-industrial societies, including intersectional precarity and the concept of 'post-middle-class marginality' among youth, skilled migrants, and women; second, advancing decolonial pedagogical innovations, such as reimagining language and intercultural education through online intercultural exchange, programmatic ePortfolios, and open-access resources—including the world’s first fully interactive open-access Japanese language textbook, Japanese Introductory 1, which embeds Ainu and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges; third, investigating transnational mobilities and intercultural industries, focusing on how migration, digitalisation, and cultural industries like food and service work shape belonging, labour, and the future of work. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), she leads innovations in equitable language education. Her key publications include the book The Japanese Restaurant: Tasting the New Exotic in Australia (Routledge, 2024), journal articles such as “Silent exits: post-3.11 Japanese skilled migration to Australia” (Social Science Japan Journal, 2019), “The Kaji-Hara (housework harassment) debates: the gendering of housework in contemporary Japan” (Japan Forum, 2021), and chapters like “Transnational domestic masculinity: Japanese men’s home cooking in Australia” (2017) and “Men’s unpaid domestic work: A critique of (re)doing gender in Contemporary Japan” (2017). Hamada has received awards including the Institute of Social Science/Oxford University Press Prize (2019), HEA Fellowship (2021), Endeavour Japan Award (2006), and Advancing Women’s Success Grants (2025). She has contributed to public lectures, such as “Transcultural Perspectives: The Rise of Asian Migrants in Melbourne’s Food Discourses” (2024).