Hiroyuki Suzuki: Project Associate Professor, The Sultan Qaboos Chair in Middle Eastern Studies, the University of Tokyo Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (UTCMES)Hiroyuki Suzuki is one of Japan’s leading young scholars in Middle Eastern studies (modern history). He obtained an M.A. in March 2012 and a Ph.D. in July 2017 from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His Ph.D. thesis (in Japanese) titled Hōki : Senryōka no Paresuchina 1967-1993 (The Mass Uprisings—“Intifada”—and Occupied Palestine (1967–1993)), is highly regarded by many researchers and scholars of Palestine Studies. It was awarded the 9th Shigeru Nambara Memorial Award for Publication by the University of Tokyo Press in 2019. The text was published, using this fund, under the same title by the University of Tokyo Press in 2020. He and his colleagues (Kensuke Yamamoto, the author of Chapter 4 of this volume, and Miyuki Kinjo) completed their translation of Rashid Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (2023, Housei University Press) just after the Gaza War broke out.Suzuki’s research is replete with rich and rare primary data from his repeated field research work in Palestine/Israel. He was a visiting scholar at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for 17 months, beginning in April 2018, with the financial support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He assumed his current position as project associate professor of the Sultan Qaboos Chair in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Tokyo in September 2019. He has played an active leadership role managing young researchers and students in academic associations, including the Japan Association for Middle East Studies and the Japan Association of International Relations, and for promoting young scholars’ research activities in the region.Other activities include attending and making presentations at international academic associations, such as the Eurasian Peace Science Conference (Jerusalem, 2019), the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) (San Antonio USA, 2018), the Korean Association of Middle Eastern Studies (KAMES) International Conference (Seoul, 2017), the Cairo University International Symposium (Cairo, 2017), and the International Sociological Association (ISA) (Vienna, 2016). Since October 7, 2023, he has frequently been asked to appear in the media (TV, radio, SNS, and web magazines) for commentary on the current situation—comments that are highly valued by Japanese audiences. He has quickly organized workshops and conferences on this issue at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Tokyo (UTCMES) and given lectures on the current situation not only for students and researchers but also for NGO activists and supporters, as well as public audiences. Keiko Sakai: Professor, Institute for Advanced Academic Research; Director, Center for Relational Studies on Global Crises, Chiba UniversityKeiko Sakai is a leading figure in the promotion of Middle East area studies and International Relations. She joined the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) in Tokyo in 1982 as a researcher on Iraq, after graduating from University of Tokyo. From 1986 until 1989 she served as a research attaché in the Embassy of Japan in Iraq, and served as the overseas researcher at the American University in Cairo from 1995–87. Since mid-2005, Sakai held the position of Professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, where, for seven years, she taught modern history and conflict analysis in the Middle East. She moved to Chiba University in October 2012 and received her Ph.D. in Area Studies from Kyoto University (2019).She served as a board member of the Japan Association for Middle Eastern Studies for more than 10 years during the 2000s and was the president of the Japan Association of International Relations (2012–2014) as the first scholar of Middle Eastern Studies to serve in that position. She served as dean of the Faculty of Law, Politics and Economics at Chiba University from 2014 to 2017. She has actively conducted collaborative research with academic and research institutions in Iraq since 2005 and has organized joint symposiums with the University of Baghdad and Mustansiriya University a number of times.She has published various academic works on contemporary Iraq and the Middle East in Japanese, such as the following: Iraq and the U.S. (2002), which received the Asia Pacific Research Award: Grand Prize; Structure of the Ruling System of the Regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq (2003) which was given the Daido Seimei Area Studies Award: Prize for encouragement in 2009; Middle East Politics (2012); Modern History after 9.11 (2018), and Where has “Spring” gone? (2022). Her publications in Japanese include the recent seven-volume series on global relational studies (Iwanami, 2020) for which she received the Consortium of Area Studies Award in 2022.She is a co-author of Iraq Since Invasion (Routledge, 2020) and has contributed a chapter to Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East (Faleh A. Jabar and Hosham Dawood, eds., Saqi, 2003), along with contributions to the Routledge Handbook of Middle East Politics (Larbi Sadiki, ed., Routledge, 2020). Her M.A. thesis (University of Durham, UK, 1995), namely, Al-Thawra al-Ashrin (2020), is available in both Japanese and in Arabic, the latter under the title of Iraq wa wilayat al-mutahhida al-Amirikiya (2023), both of which are available from Adnan Bookshop, Baghdad, Iraq.
