Daniel Ahikiro Iwama, Ph.D.

I am a scholar of human-environment relations. I have a particular interest in the intersection of land-use planning, militarism and Indigenous flourishing in the pacific, and use planning history and political geography as entrypoints to 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. 

I am most curious about the politics of land in colonial situations around the world. Most of my research asks questions about the different ways that "planning" is used by state and non-state actors in situations where jurisdictional orders fabricated during processes of colonial settlement become challenged and rearranged. These curiosities animate both my teaching and research agendas.

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