Japan

Aki Miyazawa, Japan

Aki Miyazawa is a religious sociologist specializing in death, funerals and graves in contemporary societies. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

Her research interests focus on natural burial movements around the world, especially natural burial in the UK and tree burial in Japan. She questions why such phenomena have occurred in many countries at a similar time, despite the many and varied differences of historical, social, cultural and religious backgrounds. Aki suggests the decline of existing belief systems and the emergence of new ecological ethics in such areas where natural burial movements have occurred, while the forms of natural burial can only be understood within context.

Aki holds a Master of Literature from the University of Tsukuba. She was also a Fellow with the JSPS Research Fellowship for Younger Scientist (DC2) in 2018-2019, and a Visiting Research Fellow at CDAS during 2019, funded by JSPS.