Career
Ota is also working for the Graduate University for Advanced Studies as an associate professor of comparative studies, and for the American Museum of Natural History as a research associate of anthropology. Ota earned his Doctor of Philosophy in sociocultural anthropology from Osaka University in 2007, after having completed an additional doctoral program in anthropology at Seoul National University from 2000 to 2003. Before joining NIHU, he lived in of Korea for seven years.
Ota"s research examines people"s recognition of cultures.
More specifically, he tries to explain how people and societies recognize their own cultural "change." What do the narratives and discourses of personal change and social shift epistemologically mean? He has pursued this question mainly through case studies of Korean political history and intellectual subculture. Ota has also been conducting researches on Korean celadon ceramics, on oversea Koreans in Mainland China and United States, and on museum administration.
