Ioan Trifu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for East Asian Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from both the University of Lyon (France) and Tohoku University (Japan) in 2013. He has been visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo and more recently at Kyushu University. His doctoral dissertation focused on the postwar evolution of Japanese local politics. As a member of the research project “Protecting the Weak: Entangled Processes of Framing, Mobilization and Institutionalization in East Asia”, he is currently in charge of the case-study regarding the protection of cultural heritage in Japan. His research is in the field of Japanese politics and public policy, with a particular focus on local revitalization, multilevel governance and heritage policy. He has a long-term interest in the opportunities offered by the comparative approach in heritage studies.