Dr Mari Miyamoto

Mari Miyamoto was a Newton International Fellow working at the SOAS South Asia Institute from April 2014-March 2016. She has analysed divers processes of cultural interpretations of global political issues such as "democracy" as well as “environmental conservation” in people's everyday lives. Her current interest lies in plural interpretations of “secularism” and religious integration in Bhutan as a multireligious society in the Himalaya. 

She obtained her Ph.D from Kyoto University in the field of political anthropology working on cultural politics of environmentalism in contemporary Bhutan for which she did intensive ethnographical fieldwork in Bhutan.

After the completion of her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University (2009),Hokkaido University (2009-2011) and at the National Museum of Ethnology (2011-2014). She also taught at Tsukuba University (2011), Kobe University (2012), Osaka University (2012-13) and Ritsumeikan University (2012-2014).

Miyamoto received an award by the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies (JASAS) for her artcle “Cultural politics of forest grazing and cattle slaughtering: environment policy and pastoralists in a national park of Bhutan”.