Dr. Sakura Yamamura, 2018-2022

Sakura Yamamura is now Junior Professor in the field of digital methods in human geography at the University of Aachen. From 2018 until 2022 she was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. With her expertise in migration studies, urban and economic geography, Sakura’s work focussed on the spatiality of migrant-led diversities in global cities, such as Frankfurt and Tokyo. Applying both quantitative and qualitative methods, she worked on the geographical localization and conceptual concretization of transnational spaces, shedding new light on social-spatial urban transformations induced by the interaction of different transnational actors. She studied geography, sociology, and social/cultural anthropology at the University of Hamburg, Université de Paris 1 - Sorbonne and the University of California at Berkeley. She previously worked for the Migration Research Group at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI), in the International Migration Division of the OECD, and at the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). She was Junior Visiting Fellow at the Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration, and Development (MACIMIDE) at Maastricht University, and lectured at the Geography Departments of the University of Hamburg and Kiel.

Research projects

• Entrepreneurial superdiversity and intersectionality (completed)
• Intersecting spaces of superdiversity (completed)
• Transnational spaces in the Global City Tokyo (completed)