Takuto Sakamoto

As a student of international relations, I have extensive substantive and methodological interests. I have been studying a broad array of subjects, from economic sanction to civil war and state disintegration in Africa, even to nomadic pastoralists in arid and semi-arid areas, who are facing rapidly changing social and ecological circumstances such as land tenure transformation and climate change.
Methodologically, I have keen interests in learning and employing various quantitative and computational tools for the study of these and other phenomena. In particular, my recent research activities benefit from the growing availability of various computational techniques such as agent-based simulation, satellite image analysis and large-scale text analysis.
The ongoing research projects include the following:

1. Systematic investigation of conceptual and normative dynamics concerning peace and security through large-scale text analysis of the United Nations documents (e.g., speech records)
2. Geo-spatial analysis of herder-farmer conflicts in the Sahel with the combined use of field survey, satellite image analysis and agent-based simulation
3. Systematic investigation of the governance structure and dynamics of the international society for sustainable peace and development with the aid of complex network science and data science

Broadly speaking, these projects address pressing issues related with 'human security'. Currently being a faculty member of the Graduate Program on Human Security (HSP) of the University of Tokyo, I aim to advance academic research in this field on the basis of rigorous methodological foundations.