Dr Natsuko Akagawa is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Queensland. She is academically trained across the humanities, social sciences, education, and management, holding a PhD in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies from Deakin University, a Master’s in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, a Master of Business Administration, a Graduate Diploma of Education, a Diploma of Portuguese Language and Culture, and a Bachelor of Arts. Her career includes prestigious international research fellowships as a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, Netherlands, supported by a competitive EU-funded fellowship, and as a Visiting Research Fellow at the East-West Centre and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, supported by United States Federal Government funding. She has served as Vice President of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage and as a Senior External Assessment Panel Member for the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. Currently, she is an Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Akagawa is an internationally recognised scholar in heritage, museum, and Asian studies, pioneering the establishment of intangible cultural heritage as a field of international scholarship and analytically linking it to cultural diplomacy. Her seminal works include the authored book Heritage Conservation in Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy: Heritage, National Identity and National Interest (Routledge, 2015) and co-edited volumes such as Intangible Heritage (Routledge, 2009), Safeguarding Intangible Heritage: Practices and Politics (Routledge, 2019), Places of Traumatic Memory: A Global Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and Conservation of Architectural Heritage: Embodiment of Identity (Springer, 2022). Other key contributions encompass chapters like ‘Intangible heritage and embodiment: Japan’s influence on global heritage discourse’ (2016) and ‘Difficult heritage’, silent witnesses: dismembering traumatic memories, narratives and emotions of firebombing in Japan’ (2020). Her scholarship has garnered over 2,200 citations. She has provided expert commentary for The New York Times, ABC News, Australian Financial Review, and featured in international documentaries such as Building Icons.

Professional Email: n.akagawa@uq.edu.au