Daniel Ahikiro Iwama, Ph.D.

I am a geography & planning scholar of human-environment relations in the Pacific and among its diasporas. I have a particular interest in militarism and how it interrupts and is interrupted by Indigenous peoples in the Pacific, and use planning history and political geography as entrypoints to my work in these fields. I am currently Assistant Professor of Land Use Planning in the Department of Planning, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley. 

In 2023, I received a PhD in Urban Planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. My dissertation,“‘War by other means’; Military base return and the local politics of realignment on Okinawa Island 1995-present,” reassessed processes of land-return under heavily militarized land regimes in what is known today as Okinawa Prefecture. I was an international fieldwork fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and held doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies