A. Mochida (Aomi) MA

Aomi Mochida (1992) is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, Art History, and Classics at Radboud University Nijmegen. She is also associated with the NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies in Amsterdam.

She completed her summa cum laude bachelor’s degree in History and Political Studies at Colby-Sawyer College in the U.S. In 2017 she obtained a cum laude research master degree in Historical Studies at Radboud University. During her masters, she conducted a research internship at the NIOD and participated in an international summer school in Nanjing, China, on mass violence and memory politics. She wrote her master thesis on the historical development and current appropriation of the Noborito Institute, a WWII-heritage in Japan. Her research interests include WWII heritage, public history, and WWII memory culture, especially in relation to the Asia-Pacific theatre.

Her NWO-funded PhD research, "Travelling War Memories: National and Global Dynamics of Japanese WWII Sites since 1945", investigates the dynamics of WWII memories, war-related heritage, civic activism, and tourism. It focuses on three heritage sites in Japan - Nagasaki (atomic bombing site), Noborito (ill-famed science institute) and Kure (WWII naval base). The project scrutinizes how, in the historical construction of these sites into both commemorative and tourist sites, various stakeholders have negotiated to strike a balance between Japanese victimhood and aggression in a local, national and international context.

Supervisors: Prof. dr. Jan Hein Furnée, Prof. dr. Marjet Derks, and Dr. Eveline Buchheim (NIOD)

• Tourism, Travel, and Text