Natsuko Akagawa has a PhD and Masters in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, a Masters in Business Administration, a Graduate Diploma of Education, and a Diploma of Portuguese Language and Culture. Currently Lecturer at The University of Queensland, Australia, she was previously Assistant Professor at The University of Western Australia. She is the author of Heritage Conservation in Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy (2014), which establishes a pioneering theoretical nexus between the politics of cultural diplomacy, heritage conservation, and national identity and interest, and has become a focus for scholars in a range of disciplines. She is also the co-editor of Intangible Heritage (2009, with Laurajane Smith). Her research focuses on the way heritage assembles histories, memories, identities and emotions as articulated in policies, practices and imaginaries. She is Expert Member and Vice-President of the International Committee on Intangible Heritage of ICOMOS. She has been a visiting research fellow at the East–West Centre and University of Hawaii, Manoa, as well as a Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies with Leiden University, Netherlands.

Laurajane Smith is Professor and Director of the Centre of Heritage and Museum Studies, and Head of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. She has authored Uses of Heritage (2006) and Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (2004), and co-authored Heritage, Communities and Archaeology (2013). Her edited books include Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes (2011, with Paul A. Shackel and Gary Campbell), Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums (2011, with G. Cubitt, R. Wilson and K. Fouseki) and Intangible Heritage (2009, with Natsuko Akagawa). She is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies and co-general editor (with William Logan) of the series Key Issues in Cultural Heritage.