Isabelle PROCHASKA-MEYER

MA7 Fellow

 

 

 







Isabelle Prochaska-Meyer holds an M.A. (magister philosophiae; 2003) and a Ph.D. (doctor philosophiae; 2011) in Japanese Studies from the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on Japanese religions and rural Japan. As a Monbukagakushō fellow at the University of the Ryukyus, she conducted research in Okinawa on spirit mediums and ancestor commemoration. A revised version of her doctoral thesis was published in 2013 as a monograph, entitled Kaminchu: Spirituelle Heilerinnen in Okinawa [Kaminchu: Spiritual Healers in Okinawa] (Vienna: Praesens). Her recent ethnographic project was a study on ageing communities and active ageing in three depopulated municipalities in the Japanese Alps (OeNB Anniversary Fund; project leader: Professor Sepp Linhart). Together with Pia Kieninger, she produced the documentary film "65+. Being old in rural Japan" (2014). In the research project "The Peace Pagoda in Vienna: A Survey of the Buddhist Order Nipponzan Myōhōji in Austria," she investigates the more than thirty years of history as well as the present situation of the peace pagoda in Vienna, which is operated by the Buddhist order Nipponzan Myōhōji (founded in 1917 by Fujii Nichidatsu in Japan).