Beginning in fall 2010, she has been on leave as an Academy Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Her book manuscript, Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History, is currently under review by Cambridge University Press. Miriam is also working on a new project that considers the efforts of Japanese anthropologists and archaeologists to formulate a national identity across the changing political contexts of the mid-twentieth century, including imperialism, war, occupation, and independence.