DoctorShinya Uekusa

***Currently I am not taking any new PhD and master's students***

I am a disaster sociologist and migration scholar, and currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology. Prior to joining the University of Canterbury in 2022, I worked as a Research Officer in Health Psychology at Massey University in Aotearoa and an Assistant Professor in Global Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of Auckland, and I have a MA in Sociology from California State University San Marcos.

My main research interests are in disaster sociology, migration, health and ageing and the sociology of language, and I am particularly interested in how the socially disadvantaged groups such as (im)migrants, (former) refugees and linguistic minorities experience and cope with cultural, economic, environmental, political and social challenges. I have just completed a 2-year study funded by HRC Explorer Grant on multilingual disaster/health crisis communication, exploring the experiences of linguistic minority communities in Ōtautahi Christchurch following the pandemic with Dr. Sylvia Nissen (Lincoln University) and Dr. Sally Carlton (University of Canterbury). Working with Massey University's Health and Ageing Research Team (HART), I also conducted a HRC funded study, explorsing the experiences of older informal caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Aotearoa.

I have published numerous papers in international academic journals and edited volumes. Many of my publications focus on migrants and minorities in disaster and crisis contexts, disaster linguicism, reflexivity, and qualitative research methods (i.e., disaster qualitative research and collaborative autoethnography). I co-edited A Decade of Disaster Experience in Ōtautahi Christchurch: Critical Disaster Studies Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, 2022) with Steve Matthewman (University of Auckland). I am currently co-editing Critical Disaster Studies in Asia and the Pacific (Palgrave, forthcoming) with Sébastien Penmellen Boret (Tohoku University) and Kien Nguyen-Trung (Monash University). I am currently a co-editor of New Zealand Sociology journal and an associate editor for Critical Disaster Studies journal.