Naoki Fujiwara

Naoki Fujiwara is a PhD student of Politics in the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies at Kobe University, Japan, where he also completed his master’s course in Politics. His research interests lie in neoliberalism, urban political ecology, gentrification, international development, environmental security and the Philippines. In his PhD dissertation he is exploring urban development in Metro Manila in the age of neoliberalism and its contradictions. He is currently a Visiting Graduate Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research. He has also served as a visiting research fellow at the Third World Studies Center in the University of the Philippines. Naoki’s work has also addressed the relationship between gentrification and segregation in the process of neoliberal urbanization of Metro Manila using field research on the Pasig River Rehabilitation Projects in Metro Manila since the 1990s. This research explores how environmental degradation along the Pasig River was “politicized” in developmental discourses, and then “depoliticized” in the political process of its riverfront redevelopment.