Biography

Tomoko Akami is a historian of international organisations, mainly focusing on Asia and the Pacific, and is Associate Professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University.

Akami has published articles on the League of Nations Health Organization in Asia, focusing on expert networks across the colonial administrations in the region. More recently, she has been working on collaborative projects with scholars of IR and International Law.

Throughout her works, she has been interested in the idea of circularity among experts across the regions, as well as the meaning of the Japanese empire in the history of modern international relations.

At the Schuman Centre, she will be working on the project, ‘Globalizing the history of international relations: From the perspective of Japanese experts and their networks, 1860s–1950s’, which aims for an alternative and more comprehensive perspective to this history by focusing on imperial polities that had dominated Asia and the Pacific in the period.