Chisato Fukuda

Chisato Fukuda is a second year doctoral student in cultural anthropology with a concentration in medical anthropology and science and technologies studies. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked at National Democratic Institute for International Affairs assisting the South Asia civic participation program and spent two years in Laos conducting sustainable development projects with International Union for Conservation of Nature. These experiences alongside her research among biomedical health practitioners in Mongolia have shaped her current interest in health-as-development. Chisato’s project is a study of efficient cookstove technologies as a novel global health strategy to mitigate air pollution and its associated health risks in ger districts, or urban shantytowns, of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Exploring how technological design, marketing, and implementation are deployed and disputed, she aims to analyze the intricacies of this seemingly simple, entrepreneurial solution. This summer she will conduct interviews with government officials, multilateral organizations, academic institutions, and ger district residents to examine how these emergent technologies are reconfiguring the national discourse on risk. Further, engaging participant-observation in ger district communities, she aims to explore how “cookstove as political culprit” has mobilized a new urban biopolitics in the capital city.

Check out more of Chisato Fukuda’s experience here