Raja ADAL (History) adal@fas.harvard.edu
Raja Adal is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History.  He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1995 having fulfilled requirements for a BA in International Studies and German.  In his senior year, he earned a fellowship to go to Japan, where he stayed for six years, first as a graduate student at the International University of Japan, then as a student of Japanese in Tokyo, and finally as a graduate student at Kyoto University.  In 2002 an interest in pursuing a comparative history of modernity in Japan and the Arab world brought him to Harvard, where he is currently working his dissertation Aesthetic Consciousness and the Negotiation of Western Modernity: Fine Art Education in Egyptian and Japanese Elementary Schools, 1870 – 1930.

Marjan BOOGERT (EALC) boogert@fas.harvard.edu
Marjan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, where she focuses on Tokugawa period history. Her dissertation investigates daimyo society in Edo in the context of bakufu politics and the bakuhan system, based on a case study of "Matsudaira Yamato no kami nikki," the diary of a daimyo who lived in the second half of the seventeenth century. From October 2001 until January 2003 Marjan was at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto for dissertation research. Before coming to Harvard, she earned her undergraduate degree from Leiden University.

Michael BURTSCHER (HEAL) burtsch@fas.harvard.edu
Michael entered the Program in History and East Asian Languages after completing his Master's degree in Modern European History at the University of Munich. His interests combine Modern European Intellectual History and the History of Modern Japan. From 1997 to 1999, he studied the History of Japanese Political Thought at the University of Tokyo, and was affiliated with the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo before returning to Harvard in 2000. His dissertation "Amaterasu's Empty Mirror. Philosophy and Politics under the Meiji State" seeks to demonstrate how "philosophy" (tetsugaku) became a central battleground for contending political positions during the Meiji era, and an important source of intellectual legitimization for the Meiji state.

Amy Louise CATALINAC (Government) catalin@fas.harvard.edu
Amy is a first-year Ph.D. student in Harvard University's Department of Government. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors (First Class) in Political Science and Japanese from Victoria University of Wellington in her native New Zealand in 2002. Amy was awarded a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship to study Japanese Politics at the University of Tokyo from April 2003 until September 2004, in which time the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) also employed her as a translator and intern. Amy's research interests include issues of national security and defense in Japan, Japan's international environmental policy, issues in domestic politics such as the movement to amend the Constitution, and issues of national identity. Amy has a publication forthcoming in the journal Japan Forum, which is entitled "Japan, the West, and the Whaling Issue: Understanding the Japanese Side". She has also recently published an article on agenda setting in the New Zealand political context in the journal Political Science.

Graduate Students: A - C Graduate Students: D - F Graduate Students: G - K Graduate Students: L - P Graduate Students: Q - Z