The United States-Japan Foundation (USJF) is pleased to announce the inaugural recipient of the USJF Scholar Dissertation Award, a new annual competition recognizing the best social sciences doctoral dissertation on Japan produced at a U.S. research university. 

The 2025 award has been presented to Dr. Qiaoyan Li Rosenberg for her dissertation "Labor Migration Programs in Japan: A Three-Step Pathway to Permanent Residence, but Precarious Labor for All." Based on fourteen months of fieldwork and over 100 interviews, her research offers new insights into Japan's guest worker programs and the challenges of labor migration and integration. Dr. Rosenberg earned her PhD from UCLA in Sociology and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. (Details here.)  

The award committee praised Dr. Rosenberg's work as "a rigorous analysis that expertly drew from Japanese sources while speaking to key debates and concerns in the social sciences."

Judging Committee:

• Sabine Frühstück, Distinguished Professor and Koichi Takashima Chair in Japanese Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

• David Leheny, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Waseda University

• Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor of Japanese Studies, Professor of Sociology, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

The award carries an honorarium of $2,500 and Dr. Rosenberg will also be honored at a reception at the 2026 Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Vancouver. Please join us there! 

Please keep on the lookout for the call for 2026 award!