Sugiura Mikiko

Mikiko M. Sugiura is a Professor in the Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, and also affiliated with the Center for Global Education and Discovery. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Tokyo, a B.A. in Comparative Culture from Sophia University, and a B.A. in Law from the University of Tokyo.

Her research centers on irrigation water governance and river management, with particular attention to water rights, water users' associations, and drought water allocation in the Asian monsoon region. Drawing on commons theory and the hydrosocial cycle, she examines how communities sustain water-dependent landscapes over time. This work extends to community-based conservation in satoyama landscapes, where she has developed the concept of "gentle power" — an alternative to both coercive top-down control and purely voluntary participation — as an analytical framework for understanding institutional change.

She conducts fieldwork primarily in Japan, with international comparative dimensions. She serves on government advisory committees including ICID, UNESCO IHP, and Japan's Water Cycle Basic Act follow-up committee. She has been teaching Water Governance, Communities, and Positive Peace at the Disaster Management PhD Program, GRIPS/ICHARM (March 2026).

Her teaching at Sophia University covers conservation, environmental science, and sustainable development at the undergraduate level, and environment and development at the graduate level.

Her recent work, "How Gentle Power Enables Community-Based Conservation: Hydrosocial Practices and Institutional Support in Tokyo's Satoyama," was published in Frontiers in Water (2026). She is also co-editor of Water and Society in Japan: Case Studies on Ecology and Governance (Sophia University Press, 2025), to which she contributed as both author and editor.