Simon Avenell

Simon Avenell is Professor in the School of Culture, History, and Language at the Australian National University. He specializes in modern Japanese history, civic activism, civil society, environmental history, and transnational history. His work has been published in major Japan and area studies journals such as The Journal of Japanese Studies, positions: east asia cultures critique, Social Science Japan Journal, Environmental History and Modern Asian Studies.

He has three single-authored books: Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan (University of California, 2010) a history of civic thought, social activism, and civil society in postwar Japan; Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), an exploration of Japanese activists role in environmental movements worldwide from the 1960s; and Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (Harvard, 2022), which traces Japan’s complicated reengagement with Asia after colonial empire and militarism.

From 2014 to 2016 he served as director of the ANU Japan Institute and from 2016 to 2022 as Associate Dean (Higher Degrees by Research) in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Before joining the ANU in 2013 he was an Associate Professor and Deputy Head in the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore (2003-2012).

Research Interests

• Modern Japanese history
• Civic activism, civil society, and state-society relations in contemporary Japan
• Political thought in contemporary Japan
• Environmental history and environmentalism in contemporary Japan
• Transnational aspects of contemporary Japanese history
• Japan in East Asia