Mgr. Anna Nakai

Research Fellow and Part-time Lecturer
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan

Visiting Fellowship 2025/26 (January 11, 2026 – February 1, 2026)

Anna Nakai is a research fellow and part-time lecturer for the Institute for Global Area Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). After obtaining her Master’s degree from the University of Warsaw, she moved to Budapest to enrol on the doctoral programme in the History Department at the Central European University (Budapest/Vienna). She has conducted research at academic institutions such as the Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen), the Herder Institute for Eastern European History (Marburg) and the German-Polish Institute (Deutsches Polen-Institut, Darmstadt). With the current position, she teaches for the History in the Public Sphere (HIPS) programme at TUFS. She has also published numerous articles on Central and Eastern Europe in Japanese. Her current research covers the cultural and intellectual history of contemporary Central Europe, with a particular focus on the late socialist underground, educational movements and dissident thought in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. She edited the collected volume Unsettled 1968 in the Troubled Present: Revisiting the 50 Years of Discussions from East and Central Europe (Routledge, 2020, with Aleksandra Konarzewska and Michał Przeperski), as well as Voicing Memories, Unearthing Identities: Studies in the Twenty-First-Century Literatures of Eastern and East-Central Europe (Vernon Press, 2023), edited with Aleksandra Konarzewska.

Statement of interest

At the institute, I intend to work on a project proposal entitled “Socialist Intellectuals and Democratic Imaginaries in the Late Cold War Era: A Comparative Perspective” to apply for research funding. To prepare, I plan to reexamine and expand my understanding of how the redefinition of socialist ideas from the 1970s to the 1990s influenced intellectual and political discourse in Central and Eastern Europe and Japan, respectively. Specifically, the project will focus on Japanese interests in the divergence of communism during that period. In this regard, the Yugoslav and Slovene experiences within the Non-Aligned Movement provide valuable insights into how regional features were perceived in different Cold War blocs.

Additionally, during my stay, I plan to discuss collaboration opportunities between Japanese and Slovene scholars within the framework of the History in the Public Sphere (HIPS) courses offered at TUFS. HIPS offers a comprehensive public history program that pays particular attention to Japanese and European experiences. Public history is an emerging discourse that needs to gain a global perspective. Therefore, it is necessary to involve relevant institutions with similar visions and values.

Selected publications

Edited Volumes

Aleksandra Konarzewska and Anna Nakai (eds). Voicing Memories, Unearthing Identities: Studies in the Twenty-First-Century Literatures of Eastern and East-Central Europe. Wilmington, DE. and Malaga: Vernon Press, 2023 [ISBN: 978-1-64889-624-8]
Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anna Nakai and Michał Przeperski (eds.) Unsettled 1968 in the Troubled Present: Revisiting the 50 Years of Discussions from East and Central Europe. London and New York: Routledge Press, 2020 [ISBN: 0367220857]

Book Chapters

Anna Nakai. “Behind the Scenes of Broadcasting March 1968: Radio Free Europe and Its Internal Disputes over the Defector Henryk Grynberg”, Unsettled 1968 in the Troubled Present:Revisiting the 50 Years of Discussions from East and Central Europe. pp. 113-128. [ISBN: 0367220857]

Peer-reviewed Journals

Anna Nakai. “On Gertrud Bortstieber Personal Papers Collection: Situating, Describing, and Analyzing the Life of Gyorgy Lukacs’s Spouse in the Context of Women’s Communist Activism.” Journal of East European Studies [Tououshi Kenkyu], Issue 40, Association of Eastern European Studies [Tououshi Kenkyukai], Tokyo, 2024., pp. 22-34. [ISSN:0386-6904]
Anna Nakai. “Reconsidering the Era of ‘Normalization’: Post-Communist Scholars and their Struggle over the New Historiography of the Philosophical Faculty, Charles University in Prague [In Japanese: ‘Seijouka-jidai’ Saikou: Posuto-Shaiakishugi no Kenkyu Chorhu].” Journal of East European Studies [Tououshi Kenkyu], Issue 40, Association of Eastern European Studies [Tououshi Kenkyukai], Tokyo, 2018, pp. 28-39. [ISSN:0386-6904]