Profile
Dr. Jacob A. E. Nielsen is a sociologist and anthropologist who is researching how efforts to address global challenges impact the everyday lives of community members. He has an interdisciplinary background, having studied Japanese studies at Aarhus University, Asia-Pacific Studies at APU Ritsumeikan, Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Liverpool. Before joining the University of Osaka, he was a Research Fellow at Robert Gordon University and a Lecturer at York St John University.
Research Interests
Dr. Jacob A. E. Nielsen’s research engages with issues of uncertainty, precariousness, multiplicities and hope in the context of political, scientific and economic efforts to enact and tackle global challenges.
His PhD and subsequent monograph published by Berghahn Books explored these issues in relation to modern slavery and labour exploitation policies and the lived experiences of transnational precarious workers in London. It critically examines the disconnect between the lived experiences of precarious workers and academic and policy methods that are used to make sense of these lived experiences. The book consequently experiments with precarious methods in order to help enact more collaborative, multiple and interdependent ways of apprehending lives in precarious worlds.
As a Research Fellow on a multinational and interdisciplinary EU Horizon 2020 project, he explored how the uncertainties and diversities of climate change projects impacted community members’ lives in the UK, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands. This has resulted in community collaborations, academic publications and presentations that explore how the socio-spatial situated practices of climate change projects can transform or entrench unequal patterns of climate citizenship and community capabilities.
He is furthermore concerned with how to experiment with research methods in order to explore more collaborative, diverse, and non-hierarchical ways of enacting and addressing climate change, inequality and other global challenges. This has involved experimenting with precarious methods, conversation games, serious play, and community evaluation workshops.
Teaching
- Sociology of Migration
- Introduction to Sociology
- Academic Writing
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Japanese Society and Culture
- Food, Culture and Society
Contact Information
nielsen.jacob.hus[at mark]osaka-u.ac.jp