Biography

Dr. Chinatsu YASUDA recently served as a Research Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). She completed her doctoral programme at the University of Tokyo in March 2026, where she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Prior to this, she gained extensive experience across various roles, including with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, as a Visiting Researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), and as a Research Assistant at the University of Tokyo. She also interned at the Delegation of the European Union to Japan. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and graduated from Sophia University in 2016, having studied abroad at Sciences Po Paris.

Her doctoral thesis analysed the evolution and characteristics of EU cultural policy within the European integration process from the 1970s to the 2010s. By comparing the cultural policy of the 2010s—an era marked by the ‘multiple crises’—with that prior to the 2000s, her research explored the contemporary features and enduring significance of EU cultural policy.

As a Max Weber Fellow, she will expand her research to focus on the transformation of the EU’s external cultural policy since the war in Ukraine. She aims to empirically analyse its strategic orientation, institutionalisation, and regional reconfiguration post-2022, investigating how culture functions as a strategic resource for value promotion and narrative construction in the EU’s external relations.

Mentor

• Erik, Jones