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Kei Kato

Biography

Kei (pronounced kay-ee) is a Ph.D. student in Geography from Japan. He broadly seeks to understand the various ways in which the ocean, its more-than-human inhabitants, and human societies interact. Drawing on interdisciplinary bodies of literature such as human-environment interaction, environmental humanities, decolonial geographies, settler colonial studies, and critical urban studies, his dissertation specifically investigates the role of ocean governance in the settler colonialization of U.S. cities in the 21st century. 

広くは、海、そこに住む人間以外の様々な存在、そして人間社会の間にある相互作用について関心を抱いています。博士論文では、人間・自然関係論、環境人文学、脱植民地主義地理学、入植者植民地主義研究、批判的都市研究など、幅広い学問領域を横断しながら、海洋空間の統治・管理と通じて21世紀のアメリカ都市における入植者植民地主義がどのように再生産されているのかについて研究を行っています。

Photo credit: Keita Yasui

Research Interests

  • human-environment interactions 人間・自然関係論
  • political ecology 政治生態学
  • environmental humanities 環境人文学
  • critical ocean studies 批判的海洋研究
  • urban geographies 都市地理学
  • settler colonialism 入植者植民地主義
  • racial capitalism 人種資本主義
  • qualitative methodologies and methods 質的方法論および調査法

Education

  • M.A. in Geography, Ohio University (Athens, Ohio, USA), 2019
  • B.A. in Anthropology, International Christian University (Tokyo, Japan), 2017

Awards and Honors

Nicholson Fellowship, Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2024)

 

Courses Taught

Graduate Teaching Assistant

GGIS 104: Social and Cultural Geography (2023 Fall)
GGIS 254: People, Places, and Environments of the US (2024 Spring)