17-19世紀前半の日本における法・政治・社会の歴史を、文字史料のみならず地図・鳥瞰図など空間表現を用いて研究している。2011年、杉本他編『絵図学入門』（東京大学出版会）を刊行した。この本は、近世日本の絵図についての、歴史学、地理学、科学史、美術史、建築史、文化財科学・保存学研究者、日本画家、文化財・古文書修復家など多様な分野の専門家（学者＋技術者）によるはじめての包括的な成果である。そのほかの主な共同編集の成果として、Kären Wigen（スタンフォード大学教授）、Cary Karacas（ニューヨーク市立大学准教授）と共に編集した Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps（The University of Chicago Press,2016）などがある。

Sugimoto Fumiko is Professor of the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. She specializes in legal, political, and cultural history of Japan from the seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth century, using not only textual documents but also maps, birds-eye views, and other spatial representations. In 2011, she published Ezu, Society, and the world: An Introduction to Early Modern Japanese Maps (Ezu gaku Nyūmon)(University of Tokyo Press), serving as first editor. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive research by many fields scholars and specialists on maps unique to the Japanese archipelago during the early modern period. The contributors of this book are scholars of history, geography, history of science, art history, architectural history, cultural history, the science of cultural assets, and cultural asset preservation; as well as specialists in traditional Japanese painting, cultural asset reproduction, and old documents restoration. She has co-edited three other volumes: Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps (The University of Chicago Press, 2016), Reading History (Rekishi o yomu　歴史を読む) (The University of Tokyo Press, 2004) and Maps in Political Culture (Ezu to chizu no seijibunka-shi　絵図と地図の政治文化史) (The University of Tokyo Press, 2001).