Academic Associate
Oscar Wrenn has recently completed his doctoral thesis based on two years of anthropological fieldwork looking at agricultural practices in an upland village in the central Japanese highlands, examining the ways in which changes associated with the marginalisation of rural areas such as depopulation and agricultural restructuring are incorporated into the bodies of farmers and farmworkers in their day-to-day, mundane engagement with their changing surroundings. He is currently engaged in further research projects looking at changing rural Japanese landscapes, specifically the connections between everyday engagement with surroundings and the past, as memory and identity become entangled with embedded practice, such as through engagement with archaeological heritage, or in the maintenance of disappearing forage and forestry management practices.
Selected Publications
- 「断絶を通じて思考する過疎地域ランドスケープ：時間・空間の非連続性に関する考察に向けて」(Thinking landscape through rupture: Temporal and spatial discontinuity in Japan’s disappearing rural communities). 『社会学雑誌』(Sociological Review of Kobe University), 2022.
- “Lost in the fields”: Wayfinding and disorientation within a Japanese agrarian landscape. Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology, 2023.
- 「もつれるー雑草との共生と競争」、「のぞきこむー農業危険物との遭遇」（’Entanglement: Weedy coexistence and competition’, ‘Peering into the other: Encounters with the dangers of agriculture’）『汚穢のリズム』（The Rhythms of Dirt and Pollution）. Sayusha, 2024.
As Co-editor:
- The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Europe and Japan. Archaeopress, 2020.
- Japan and the World: Artistic and Cultural Flows. The Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 2021.