Dr Janet Borland
Janet Borland is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow. The title of her three-year project is “Sites of Learning, Spaces of State: Reconstructed Primary Schools and Small Parks in Tokyo, 1923-1945.”
Her research interests revolve around how the Japanese government, elites, educators and local associations have attempted to use natural disasters and the process of reconstruction opportunistically to better manage subjects, citizens, and society in the modern period.
The primary goal of Janet’s ARC project
is to investigate the establishment and evolution
of primary schools and small parks in Tokyo,
and their role in state and society, from 1923
to 1945. Specifically, it aims to determine
how two important civic facilities typically
identified as sites of learning and sites of
leisure, increasingly came to be used as spaces
of state.
Janet completed undergraduate degrees in Arts
and Science at the University of Melbourne where
she majored in Japanese and psychology. She
completed her MA in 2003 and her PhD in 2008.
The title of her manuscript in progress is
“Reconstructed from the Ruins: Schools,
Children and Education in Tokyo after the 1923
Earthquake.”
Publications and conference papers:
- 'Makeshift Schools and Education in the Ruins of Tokyo, 1923', Japanese Studies 29, no.1 (2009): 135-147.
- 'Lessons from History for Today and Tomorrow: Disaster Prevention and Education in Japanese Schools Following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake,' Education Without Borders Conference Proceedings, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 25-27 February 2007.
- 'Capitalising on Catastrophe: Reinvigorating the Japanese State with Moral Values Through Education Following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake,' Modern Asian Studies 40(4), October 2006: 875-907.
- 'Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923,' Japanese Studies 25 (1), May 2005: 21-34.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150. Fax: 9360 6381, Email: j.borland@murdoch.edu.au
