Midori seeks to uncover how interactions between the Indigenous population and the colonial settlers from the 17th to 19th centuries produced new scientific knowledge at a global level. Specifically, she plans to do a comparative history of the Ainu people, the indigenous people of northern Japan, and the Native Americans. The Indigenous peoples in these regions experienced cultural, environmental, and social changes when colonial settlers invaded their lands. With the changes in the natural environment and introduction to new diseases, the Indigenous population needed to produce and integrate new knowledge to accommodate a different lifestyle. For the colonial settlers, the lands of the Indigenous peoples were foreign, and they needed to acquire knowledge through experimentation and communication with the indigenous population. Midori is most interested in investigating how people produced “natural knowledge” in the borderlands of Japan and the United States. “Natural knowledge” includes knowledge of geology, geography, animals, plants, and humans.

Her first co-edited book is James Riley Weaver’s Civil War (Kent State University Press, 2019). From 2014-18, Midori co-edited a Civil War POW diary written by James Riley Weaver, a Union officer, and did extensive research on Civil War Prisons. She utilized geographic information services (GIS) to create an interactive map for this transcription project. Midori graduated summa cum laude from DePauw University (2017) where she& studied history, geology, and French. In 2017, Midori was awarded the Gilder Lehrman History Scholar Award for her work in U.S. history.