Kenji Kuramitsu
Thesis title: "Where Two or More Are Gathered:" Group Work in the Wake of Nikkei Incarceration
PhD supervisors:
Background
My professional background is in spiritual care (hospital and university chaplaincy) and mental health (as a licensed clinical social worker and board-certified group psychotherapist). A clinician and educator, I have also served as an Adjunct Professor for McCormick Theological Seminary and am Clinical Associate Faculty with the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis.
My undergraduate studies (Social Work and Spanish) were completed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2011) and my master's at McCormick Theological Seminary (M.Div, 2019) and the University of Chicago (Social Work AM, 2019). I completed postgraduate training with Bexley Seabury Theological Seminary (Diploma in Anglican Studies, 2024), and the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 2025).
In addition to my studies, I work full-time in higher education chaplaincy as Associate Dean for Community Life, University of Chicago, and operate a small private practice (Kintsugi Psychotherapy PLLC).
Research summary
My research investigates the theological dimensions of Japanese American mass incarceration and redress history, particularly the religious and spiritual resources (eg. group encounters and dialogues, public witness/testimony, pilgrimage, and use of sacred texts and rituals) that community members have drawn upon in group settings to cohere community identity, confront violence and erasure, and recover from large-scale racialized trauma. I believe these legacies of group-based emotional and spiritual care offer a necessary correction to atomized, individualistic models of pastoral care which often fail to treat community trauma.