Kurata is a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University. Specializing in human geography, she conducts surveys and research about the relationship between human emotions and places, such as the attachment to and loss of place. Kurata was born in a Touya (head) family, which preserves the tradition of Sagi no Mai (heron dance), an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Yamagata Prefecture. Currently, she is involved in the “Do a Front” project that utilizes the houses and warehouses of lumber merchants, successors of Touya since the Edo period, reusing traditional cultural and local resources in the art domain.