I am a cultural geographer with two broad research interests: A) the geographies of home and B) the geographies of teaching and learning.

A. Geographies of Home

My work on the Geographies of Home approaches the subject across geographical scales, from the body to the nation. The research has appeared in various journal articles and book chapters, plus my book "Ryokan:: mobilizing hospitality in rural Japan" (University of Hawai'i Press, 2022).

At the scale of the body, I have analyzed gendered and embodied service work in Japan's tourism industry, specifically ryokan (inns). My focus on home at the scale of the body has contributed to mobility studies through my exploration of the notion of the "production of fixities." This idea engages the mobilities paradigm, not only by acknowledging that mobility requires both the fixity of concrete and steel and the relative fixity of people, but also by exploring the simultaneous layering of mobilities and fixities experienced by individuals, particularly in the tourism industry. Specifically, I have shown how tourist accommodations aim to create pleasure in non-movement, precisely to celebrate the immobility of home (both the ryokan and the idyllic rural home of national identity, the furusato, or "native place") through affective, embodied labor. I show why some people choose to be immobile, and more importantly, how people's mobility at one scale can co-exist with their immobility at another and lead to a deep ambivalence toward mobility and stasis. Overall, I show the limitations of conceiving individuals as either mobile or immobile, and I describe the complex ways that different scales and regimes of mobility interact on people's bodies, personal lives, careers, and aspirations. This research appears in the journal "Mobilities" (2015 - selected for reprint in "Mobilities: Critical Concepts in Built Environment," edited by Ole B. Jensen (2015, Routledge)), the edited volume "Rethinking Japanese Feminisms," edited by Julia Bullock, Ayako Kano, and James Welker (2018, University of Hawai'i Press), and the Gender and (Im)mobilities in the Context of Work conference at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in 2016.

I have also contributed to debates in workplace geographies and qualitative research methods by focusing on the production of the ryokan (as home) at the scale of the body. I have argued that although embodied experience, situated corporeal knowledge(s), and bodily mobility lie at the forefront of many research agendas within geography, the body itself has been largely ignored in the work of labor geographers. By taking seriously bodies at work through what I call 'working participant observation,' I show how the general notion of flexible labor often associated with post-industrial society becomes embodied in workplaces and forms of work intended to create a sense of (nostalgic, national, gendered) home. This research appears in the journal "Area" (2012 - awarded Runner-up, Wiley Blackwell Publishers Area Prize for New Research in Geography) and "Fieldwork in Tourism: Methods, Issues and Reflections," edited by C. Michael Hall (2011, Routledge).

At the scale of the community and the nation, I have explored the postwar depopulation of rural Japan and the ways that tourism has served to produce rural villages as a home of national identity, seemingly separated in time and space from contemporary urban Japan. For both domestic and international tourists alike, rural Japan is often considered an authentic home of Japaneseness that remains relevant and accessible via tourism. My work has shown how real economic and social problems in the countryside bring new opportunities for rural communities to claim their relevance in the formation of Japanese identity. Through long-term engagement with the hot springs resort community of Kurokawa Onsen (over 20 years), I have shown the role that local actors have played in creating and enacting a particular local and national landscape, which has not only strengthened the community's status as an exemplar of the idealized aesthetics and social relations of the past, but also shown it to be a rare rural community that has successfully adapted to economic and cultural opportunities of the present. This work has appeared in "Landscape Journal" (2014), the journal "Tourism Geographies" (2008), and my book "Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan" (2022).

The disciplinary breadth work that has cited my scholarship above indicates that my research on the geographies of home, although based exclusively on work in Japan, has made contributions beyond Japanese Studies and Geography, to heritage studies, tourism studies, mobilities studies, labor studies, landscape architecture and planning, gender studies, and debates on research methods (see examples below of my four most representative publications). This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (US - DDRI Fellowship), the Japan Foundation (Dissertation Fellowship), the Social Science Research Council (Japan Studies Dissertation Workshop), the Japanese Ministry of Education (Research Scholarship, Osaka National University), and the University of Colorado (Gilbert White Fellowship and Center for Humanities and the Arts Fellowship).

B. Geographies of Teaching and Learning

My second main research focus relates to the Geographies of Teaching and Learning. This includes interest in the physical locations of teaching and learning, podcasts as teaching and learning tools, and policies and practices surrounding grading.

My work on teaching and learning locations includes a focus on research methods, overseas field courses, and virtual classrooms, including during COVID-19 lockdowns. My interests in research methods led to a co-authored chapter on "Participant Observation" (2023, with Nathan Green) for the 4th edition of "Key Methods in Geography" and a chapter on ethnography for the book "Teaching Japan" (2024). My interest in overseas field-based courses stemmed from critical reflections and constant adjustments to my fieldwork course in Japan (held each May). This resulted in multiple conference presentations and educator workshops at NUS, as well as articles in the "Journal of Geography in Higher Education" (2015) and "Education About Asia" (2014). Finally, my interest in virtual spaces for teaching and learning (including during COVID-19) led to a chapter titled "Learning on Pause? The Ambivalent and Conflicting Velocities of International Student Mobilities in Pandemic Times" (2022), as well as several papers related to the challenges and opportunities associated with teaching about and with popular culture via Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. This work appeared in "Teaching Japanese Popular Culture", edited by Deborah Shamoon and me (2016, Association for Asian Studies Publishers) and the "electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies" (2013).

Another interest has been in the effectiveness of podcasts as a learning tool. I received a LIFT grant ($71,413) to study this intervention and produce a podcast based on student research projects from my general education course titled "Home." The podcast, called 'Home on the Dot', has run for three seasons and 30+ episodes. I have also shared my findings with educators across Singapore (NUS, NTU, MOE) and beyond (Japan, USA, Netherlands), with some episodes being used as required listening for other educators' courses. "Home on the Dot" was also featured on the Singapore Airlines in-flight entertainment system.

Finally, I have done research on policies and practices related to grading. The foremost is my project, Assessing the impacts of Grade-free Learning (2014-2018). When NUS introduced a Gradeless First Semester in 2014, I set out to understand its effects on students and faculty. I began with an online survey that received over 1200 responses, which I later repeated every six months and expanded to a faculty-specific survey and focus group interviews. The study, funded by CDTL with a modest $7000, collected over 3000 responses and enabled collaboration and co-publication with a colleague at CDTL and one undergraduate student. This work led not only to a comprehensive review of the history of grading and pass/fail systems around the world, but also important findings about the limitations of the policy to relieve student stress and aid student transition to university life. It also joins an emerging set of voices questioning the relationship between grades and learning in the broader context of education. This research appears in "Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education" (2017 with Ragupathi and Luo) and "Journal of Further and Higher Education" (2020 with Ragupathi).

Elsewhere, I have written critical and empirical pieces on the problematic of teaching and learning area studies (in "Teaching Japan" 2024; "Environment and Planning D: Society and Space" 2016), writing challenges (in "Studying Japan" 2020), and the value of metaphors for learning (in "Asian Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning," 2016). Moreover, I co-edited a volume titled "Teaching Japanese Popular Culture" (with Deborah Shamoon, 2016) for a wide audience of instructors at the university and secondary school level who either do, or wish to, teach about or with Japanese popular culture.