Yuniya (Yuni) Kawamura, Social Sciences, has been selected as the winner of the 2026 International Fashion Science Award (IFSA) by the International Jury at ISEM Fashion Business School, in the University of Navarra, Spain. The award was created in 2019 to recognize and honor academics with outstanding contributions to the field of fashion science and to support the creation of the new discipline in academia. Kawamura will be visiting their Madrid campus in July to receive the award.
Kawamura is well-known as a scholar who has coined the term “fashion-ology,” which is a study of fashion with a macro-structural approach to fashion as an institutionalized system. Her academic bestseller Fashion-ology has been translated into Italian, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Turkish, and it is now in its third edition with a new subtitle, Fashion-ology: Fashion Studies in the Postmodern Digital Era (Bloomsbury 2023). Her other publications include Fashioning Japanese Subcultures, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture, Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment, and Sebastian Masuda, among others.
Kawamura is currently completing a book manuscript titled Kawaii-ology: Constructing Japanese Cute Aesthetics and Identity through Ukiyo-e, Manga, and Harajuku Fashion; the book is expected to be published later in 2026. She is a prolific writer who continues to publish scholarly books in fashion studies and frequently attends national and international conferences to present her research. She has been quoted in major publications and news outlets, such as BBC, Le Monde, NHK, Nikkei, and The Economist.