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The United States-Japan Foundation (USJF) hosted a reception on March 13, 2026, at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Vancouver to honor Qiaoyan Li Rosenberg as the inaugural recipient of the United States-Japan Foundation Scholar Dissertation Award. The event, held at the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel, gathered scholars, students, and partners of USJF to celebrate the launch of this new award and Rosenberg’s contributions to the study of labor migration in Japan.
Rosenberg, a graduate of UCLA’s Department of Sociology and currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, was recognized for her dissertation, “Labor Migration Programs in Japan: A Three-Step Pathway to Permanent Residence, but Precarious Labor for All.” Drawing on fourteen months of fieldwork and more than 100 in-depth interviews with migrant workers, her research examines Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program and Specified Skilled Worker system, highlighting gaps between policy intentions and implementation in practice.
In brief remarks, Rosenberg expressed her gratitude to the United States-Japan Foundation for establishing the award and acknowledged the recognition it brings to both labor migration as a critical issue in Japan and the academic training she received at UCLA. Members of the award committee, including Prof. Sabine Frühstück (UCSB) and Prof. Kiyoteru Tsutsui (Stanford), noted the high caliber of submissions and praised the rigor, detail, and sensitive use of ethnographic and policy data in her work.
Rosenberg will begin at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS) at Waseda University, Tokyo, as an Assistant Professor from April 2026.
The USJF Scholar Dissertation Award carries an honorarium of 2,500 dollars and is intended to recognize outstanding social science research on Japan that uses Japanese sources and methods to illuminate contemporary politics, economy, and society. Nominations for the second annual award, now renamed Richard J. Samuels Dissertation Award in Japanese Studies, are accepted until June 15, 2026. Details on the next competition are available on the United States-Japan Foundation website.
