Dr Sébastien Penmellen Boret

Contact: sebastien.boret@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Sébastien Boret holds an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2003-05) and a PhD in Anthropology from Oxford Brookes University (2005-11). He is currently a JPS- post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tohoku, Japan.

Research Interests and Projects

Anthropology of death, kinship and the self; natural disaster, memory and indigenous science; Japan and Indonesia.

Natural Disaster, memories and death

Investigating Japan's March 2011 disaster, this project aims to study the processes of memorialising the tragic event and its victims through tangible (memorial monuments) and intangible (ceremonies) acts of remembrance. This will allow an examination of the politics surrounding the construction of public memorials where communities, religious institutions and governmental organisations intersect. Looking beyond the disaster specifics and Japan, this project is a reflection on the politics of death in the (re)construction of memory, religion and nationhood in contemporary society.

Culture of Tsunami: A socio-ecological approach of life and death in Japan and Indonesia

The second part of this research is the beginning of a long-term comparative study of cultures of tsunami in Japan and Indonesia http://sebastienpenmellenboret.wordpress.com/

Publications

(November 2013) Tree Burial in Japan: Cultural Innovation, Environment and Death, Routledge, Japan Anthropology Workshop Series.

An Anthropological Study of a Japanese Tree Burial: Kinship, Identity and Death, in Hikaru Suzuki (ed.) Death and Dying in Contemporary Japan: Shifting Social Structures and Values. London: Routledge.

(Forthcoming) People’s Own Grave, People’s Own Life: Identity and Memorialisation in Japanese Tree-Burial and Non-Ancestral Graves, in John Traphagan and Christopher Feldman (eds) Title tbc.

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