Naomi Berman shares her inspiring academic journey, detailing her path to becoming a university assistant professor and her impactful work with NGOs.
Contributions as a youth sociologist
Nick: So let's start with a little history. Do you want to give us a summary of your academic background?
Naomi: Sure. So as you mentioned, I'm a youth sociologist, and I guess that makes me a jack of all trades, master of none. So I've always been interested in just random phenomena around young people and the kinds of issues that they're dealing with in their daily lives.
So, as you said, I've been teaching at university level, I've worked at NGOs, I've worked for local government of a range of different organizations, universities, in a research capacity and teaching. And then I've moved to Japan, nine years ago, started teaching academic writing and picked up my interest in young people with hikikomori.
And also, just campus design, I can't help but compare the way Australian universities are designed compared to Japanese universities and the implications for young people and their well-being, because there's lots of scope for improvement in the design of Japanese university.