Akifumi Iwabuchi is Professor of Maritime Anthropology and Nautical Archaeology at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, which is a member institution of the UNESCO UNITWIN Network for Underwater Archaeology. He is the ICOMOS-ICUCH national representative for Japan, a vice-president of the Japan Society for Nautical Research, or a director of the Asian Research Institute of Underwater Archaeology. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1990. His publications include The People of the Alas Valley: A Study of an Ethnic Group of Northern Sumatra (Clarendon Press, 1994) and Cultural Heritage under the Sea: An Introduction to Underwater Archaeology (Kagaku-Dojin, 2012).