Stella Dixon

Stella Dixon is a PhD student in social anthropology. Her ESRC-funded research focuses on how climate change is affecting urban dwellers’ relationships with nature and seasonality in Tokyo, Japan. Building on her MRes research among satoyama conservation activists in Japan, where she explored how participants took rural concepts of nature ‘home’ to the city, Stella is developing a broader research project into the role of nature and seasonality in everyday life in Tokyo.

Her fieldwork will explore how climate change is disrupting existing ways of relating to nature – especially notions of ‘the four seasons’ - and what this tells us about social and cultural change in a society where nature and seasonality have traditionally been coded in specific ways.  Before coming to SOAS, Stella studied for a BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, specialising in Social Anthropology (2017-20). Having got a taste for research as a transport planning consultant, where she worked on transport strategy and economic analysis for a variety of local and national partners, she returned to anthropology in 2022 to pursue her own research interests here at SOAS. She is the President of the SOAS Disabled Students’ Society for 2023/24 and a proudly autistic anthropologist.

Japan, environmental anthropology, urban anthropology, nature, seasonality, climate change