Dr Guth's particular field of study is in Japanese design history. Published works include her book about Masuda Takashi, a collector of Japanese and Chinese artefacts who was one of the first to re-contextualise objects that once adorned temples and shrines by bringing them into the home. Another focused on the long overlooked son of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who travelled to Japan during the Victorian era, examining what he collected and how that was received at the time.

Place these alongside her current work into Katsushika Hokusai's famous wood carving, The Great Wave, which Dr Guth says has, over the years, been represented and reinterpreted from Russia to the USA, and a thread readily emerges. "I've been particularly interested in issues of trans-nationalism," she agrees, "The books that I've written primarily address questions of: How do people see things across cultures? What kind of expectations do they bring? What kind of pre-conditions do people bring to the learning process?"