Researcher

Mihoko Sakurai

Executive Research Fellow / Associate Professor
Doctor (Media and Governance)

■Research Area
Smart cities, DX, resilience, sustainability, disaster response

I specialize in management information systems and research on ICT utilization in municipalities and local communities. In 2015, we traveled to Norway in Scandinavia to work with seven municipalities in Europe to design and develop a communication platform to enhance local resilience (EU Horizon 2020 Smart Mature Resilience Project).

The keyword of our research is resilience. Resilience is the concept of a system that evolves toward the future while responding to the changing needs of the field and addressing diverse social issues. By combining it with management information system studies, we can dig deeper into the process of social evolution and user needs using digital technology. These understandings are important in the promotion of DX, which has become a hot topic in recent years. We consider digital x resilience to be an important keyword for the realization of a sustainable society as represented by the SDGs and for the evolution of society itself, and are conducting research on this topic.

Brief History

After working as a Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Keio University, Research Fellow (DC2) at Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Associate Professor at the Department of Information Systems, Agder University (Norway), he has been in his current position since 2018. He participated in the EU Horizon 2020 project in Norway. His field of expertise is Management Information Systems. His research focuses on ICT utilization in local governments and local communities from the perspective of information systems, with smart cities and resilience as keywords.

Major Works

Sakurai, M. and Rajib Shaw (Joint editor), 2021, “Emerging Technologies for Disaster Resilience”, Springer, Singapore.
Sakurai, M. and Chughtai, H. 2020, “Resilience against crises: COVID-19 and lessons from natural disasters,” European Journal of Information Systems.
Sakurai, M., Patricia Marana, 2019. “Towards a resilience management guideline – Cities as a starting point for societal resilience,” Sustainable Cities and Society, vol.48, 101531.
Sakurai, M. and Kokuryo, J. 2018. “Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town: Panasonic’s challenge towards building a sustainable society,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, vol.42, Article 19, pp.508-525.
Sakurai, M., Watson, R.T., Abraham, C. and Kokuryo, J. 2014. “Sustaining Life During the Early Stages of Disaster Relief with a Frugal Information System: Learning from the Great East Japan Earthquake,” IEEE Communications Magazine (52:1), pp.176-185.

Educational Background

2005 Graduated from Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University
2011 Completed Master’s program, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University
2015 Completed Doctoral program, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

Career

2005 Japan Newspaper Publishers Association (until 2009)
2011 Project Researcher, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University
2013 Project Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University
2014 Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University (DC2)
University of Georgia (USA) International student intern (February – May, August – October)
2015 University of Agder (Norway) Faculty of Social Science,
Information Systems Department, Postdoctoral research fellow
2017 University of Agder (Norway) Faculty of Social Science,
Information Systems Department, Associate Professor
2018 Senior Researche Fellow / Associate Professor, Center for Global Communication, International University of Japan
2022 Executive Research Fellow / Associate Professor, Center for Global Communication, International University of Japan.