Professor Watt specializes in Japanese history. In a current book project, she seeks to gain a better understanding of the Allied-managed population transfers throughout East Asia at the end of the World War II.
Professor Watt specializes in Japanese history. In a current book project, she seeks to gain a better understanding of the Allied-managed population transfers throughout East Asia at the end of the World War II.
A study of the American-led dismantling of Japan’s settler colonial project, Decolonizing Japan: American Occupation and Humanitarianism after World War II shows how a range of reform and humanitarian efforts under Occupation generated a vocabulary of self-determination, sovereignty, and human rights, one that helped ease Japan's transition away from empire and into an ethno-national state. Under review at Oxford University Press.
A life history of Japan’s most famous diplomat, Sadako Ogata: Ambassador to the World analyzes how Ogata's education and professional contributions, especially as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991-2000, exemplify Japan’s national history from war, Occupation, and the US-Japan Alliance to prominence in international organizations and economic development initiatives in Asia, from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first.