Shimpei Cole Ota

Shimpei Cole Ota (太田 心平, Korean: 오타 심페이; born 1975) is a sociocultural anthropologist, sociocultural historian, researcher of Northeast Asian studies and curator of ethnology. He is an associate professor of cross-field research at the National Museum of Ethnology which is the largest research institute for the humanities in Japan and is one of the six members of the National Institutes for the Humanities, Japan (NIHU). Ota is also working for the Graduate University for Advanced Studies as an associate professor of museum studies, and is affiliated at the American Museum of Natural History as a research associate of anthropology.

Shimpei C. Ota
太田 心平
Born	1975 Osaka City, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Other names	오타 심페이
Occupation	associate professor
Years active	2000s - present
Academic background
Education	B.A. Human Sciences (Sociology), Osaka University (1998) M.A. Human Sciences (Anthropology), Osaka University (2000) A.B.D. Anthropology Seoul National University (2003) Ph.D. Human Sciences (Anthropology) Osaka University (2007)
Alma mater	Osaka University
Academic work
Discipline	cultural anthropology, cultural history
Sub-discipline	museum studies
Institutions	National Museum of Ethnology (Japan), Graduate University for Advanced Studies, National Institutes for the Humanities, American Museum of Natural History

Career

Ota was born in Osaka City and earned his BA (1998), MA (2000), then PhD (2007) in human sciences from Osaka University. He also completed an additional doctoral program in anthropology at Seoul National University from 2000 to 2003. Before joining NIHU, he lived in Korea for seven years.

Research

Ota's research examines people's recognition of cultures. More specifically, he tries to explain how people and societies recognize their own cultural "change." What do the narratives and discourses of personal change and social shift epistemologically mean? He has pursued this question mainly through case studies of Korean political history and intellectual subculture. For example, his publications explore South Korean activists' recognition of Korean "democratization," and the cultural history of Korean scholar-bureaucrats from their descendants' point of view during the 17th to 19th centuries. Ota has also been conducting researches on Korean celadon ceramics, on oversea Koreans in Mainland China and United States, and on museum administration.

References

아사쿠라 도시오・오타 심페이, ed. (2012). 한민족 해외동포의 현주소 (in Korean). 학연문화사. ISBN 978-89-5508-281-4. Archived from the original on 16 June 2014.

External links

• National Museum of Ethnology | Associate Professor Shimpei Ota Archived 29 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine
• American Museum of Natural History | Research Associate Shimpei Ota
• Shimpei Cole Ota (Personal Website)