Fung Wan Yin Kimberly

Fung Wan Yin Kimberly (PhD, Hitotsubashi University 2025) is an environmental anthropologist whose scholarly interests center on the socio-environmental transformations of post-industrial landscapes. Her dissertation is an ethnography of the aftermath of Japan’s first major industrial pollution disaster, the Ashio Copper Mine Poisoning Incident. She explores the temporal layers of ruination and recovery, examining the dialectical dynamics between exposure to and protection from toxicity, as well as the tension between restoration and the enduring legacies of pollution.

Throughout her career, Fung has explored the relationship between community and space in various contexts, from urban governance to post-industrial recovery. She has studied the governance of Chinese temples in colonial Hong Kong and the spatial relationships between local shrines and suburban communities in Tokyo (JSPS grant: 20J21349). With a focus on Japan, she has analyzed collective actions and social responses to crises, collaborating on quantitative projects examining social movements in post-3.11 Japan (26245057) and cultural participation in Greater Tokyo during COVID-19 (19H01557). These perspectives converge in her dissertation, which centers on the interconnected dynamics of community, space, and disaster.

Fung’s work offers critical insights into the socio-material afterlives of industrialization, the politics of space, and the complexities of community-driven regeneration, drawing primarily on ethnographic approaches complemented by interdisciplinary perspectives. Her ethnographic findings have been featured in research blogs and presented through creative works at exhibitions.

- “Hoping for Plants in Industrial Ruination” (Critical Asia Archives, invited contribution)
- “Learning in the Afterlives: Multiple Temporalities of Pollution” (Network in Canadian History & Environment, selected contribution).

A full CV is available here. (external link to personal website; last updated: 4 July 2025)