PEOPLE

Sunjin Oh is a Project Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Science, the University of Tokyo. Ph.D. (Sociology). Sunjin specializes in critical social theory and the history of social thought. She has been engaged in the formation of a theory that brings about a renewal of both time theory and alienation theory, reconstructing the concept of self-alienation as ‘alienation from time.’ As part of this, she is dealing with how the social reality of alienation is shaped in communication about generative AI. Her recent publications include “From “Elsewhere” to “No Place (non-lieu)”: Utopia in the Late Thoughts of Zygmunt Bauman” (2022, in Japanese).

For further information：https://researchmap.jp/ohsunjin?lang=en

Honoka Kato is a project researcher at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. She is currently enrolled in the Doctoral Course at the International Christian University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests lie in the fields of media studies and gender studies. Presently, she is conducting research on the relationship between women’s weekly magazines and the women’s liberation movement through the lens of media history. Additionally, she is interested in exploring the potential and challenges of various forms of feminist activism in digital media spaces, particularly focusing on practices surrounding podcasts.

Essayist and visiting researcher
Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies
University of Tokyo
After graduating from the Department of Political Studies, Faculty of Law, Gakushuin University, Keiko Kojima joined Japanese broadcaster TBS, where she worked as an announcer for 15 years. Currently residing with her family in Perth, Australia, she appears in a variety of media in Japan, speaking and writing about women’s careers, work-life balance, and gender issues. Ms. Kojima is a regularly contributor to “AERA,” “Nikkei ARIA,” “VERY,” and other magazines. She has written several books, including “Gebaku” and “Rururairai – Diary of living and working between Australia and Japan,” and a number of novels, including “Horizon.” She received the 36th Galaxy DJ Personality Award.

For further information：https://www.applecross.jp/kojima

Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts, Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Worked as a staff writer at Nikkei Business Publications for 16 years. Fulbright Visiting Scholar at University of Michigan (2006-2007). Since April, 2021 working for present institution.
Gender Equality Plan Execution and Monitoring Committee Member at the Cabinet Office, Committee Member at Gender Equality Plan for Tokyo Metropolitan Government,
Chair of the committee of promoting gender equality at Toshima-ward.
B.A. in Law and Master of Business Administration, Hitotsubashi University
Author of : “Bread-winning wives and caring husbands: strategic exchange of gender roles”(Keiso Shobo), “Corporate communications with no gender stereotypes”(Nikkei Shimbun Shuppan), “The shock of developing country as gender equality”(Shogakukan), “Watching popular dramas with gender lens: Korea, Japan, U.S., EU” (Kobunsha), “Please don’t judge based on our gender”1-3(Chobunsha).

For further information：https://rengejibu.hatenablog.com/
https://twitter.com/rengejibu

Senior Manager
News Division, Nagoya Station NHK(Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
Keiko Yamamoto is a journalist at NHK (JAPAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION). She currently is in charge of news at Nagoya Station after working at the broadcaster’s 24-hour English channel, NHK World Japan. Keiko has covered social issues with a focus on empowerment of women such as #MeToo movement, children’s right and education.
In 2001, she founded a network for women journalists, connecting people in order to promote new social values and concepts to Japanese society. The association has grown and now has more than 800 members that include women from other professional fields. In 2009, the Asia Society named her as an Asia21 Fellow, a young leader of Asia. Keiko received her MA in International Development from Nagoya University. She is the mother of a 12-year-old daughter.

For further information：https://www.nhk.or.jp/nagoya/

Touko Shirakawa is Journalist about declining birthrates, Author, and Visiting Researcher of Graduate School of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo. She graduated from Faculty of Letters, Department of Sociology, Keio University in 1984. She received her MBA diploma in Strategic Management from Chuo University in 2020.
Since 2002 to the present, she has been writing about women’s issues especially to suggest the balanced lifestyle for women’s birthing and work. Her research expertise and interest are women empowerment, SDGs and diversity management.
She is the author of several books: “The Era of KONKATSU (Marriage Hunting Era)”, co-authored with Masahiro Yamaguchi, Professor of Sociology at Chuo University, which has sold 200,000 copies in 2008. “This is where the realization of work style reform of your company goes wrong !”(2017) , “A Boundary of Harassment”(2019). She has written more than 25 books.
She served as a member of Cabinet Office Gender Equality Bureau’s “Expert Panel on Priority Policies” in 2016-2020, also served as a member of Cabinet Secretariat’s “The Council for the Realization of Work Style Reform” in 2016-2020. She also holds positions as Project Professor at Sagami Women’s University and as Visiting professor at the Center for General Education, Showa Women’s University.

Ph.D. (Socio-Information and Communication Studies). Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Culture, Faculty of Humanities, Otsuma Women’s University. Global Media Studies. She researches how “boundaries” among people are (re)constructed and strengthened, and how “boundaries” with others are crossed and “solidarity” with others is imagined and practiced from the approach of media studies, journalism studies, and historical sociology. She is currently conducting a few research projects; media discourses and journalism on social minorities, transnational social movements and media practice, and cross-national analysis of journalism cultures. She has worked as an Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative of Information Studies, the University of Tokyo (2022), Assistant Professor, Center for Global Liberal Arts Program, Rikkyo University (2018-2021), a Project Research Associate, Integrated Human Sciences for Cultural Diversity, The University of Tokyo (2014-2017), and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (2012-2013). Her publication includes single-authored The Age of the Japan-Korea Solidarity Movement: Transnational Public Sphere and Media in the 1970s and 80s (University of Tokyo Press, 2018, in Japanese), co-authored Media Studies from Gender Perspective (co-authored, Sekaisisosha, 2023, in Japanese), and co-authored Reporting on Sexual Violence in the #MeToo Era (Routledge, 2022).

For further information：https://researchmap.jp/misooklee?lang=en

Rong Zhang is associate professor of Tongji Zhejiang College, department of Social Science and visiting researcher of the University of Tokyo. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 2016. With the work experience as reporter and editor in People’s Daily Online (Beijing, China) and the Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo, Japan), her main research interests include online journalism, convergence media, international communication, etc. The book based on her doctoral thesis Collective Journalism: Net media’s new possibilities generalized from the Chinese cases (2017), was published and fully funded by Japan Press Research Institute.

Akira TANAKA is a Lecturer at the Department of Social Design, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jissen Women’s University, and a Visiting Researcher of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, at the University of Tokyo. He specializes in media and journalism studies. He received his BA degree in economics from Keio University while completing the sub-major course at the Institute for Journalism, Media ＆Communication Studies at the Institute for Journalism, Media ＆Communication Studies in 2016. And then, he received his PhD in socio-information studies from the University of Tokyo in 2022. He got the JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (DC1) and then worked as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University before getting his current position in April 2024. He is the author of “Journalism of Silent Voices: How to Visualize Minority Opinions” (Keio University Press, to be published in 2024), and co-author of “Has Japan become ‘right leaning’? (Keio University Press, in 2020), “How was the Tokyo Olympics Viewed: Mass Media Reporting and Social Media Voices” (Minerva Shobo, in 2024).

Galina Shyndriayeva is currently a Researcher at Musashi University, Tokyo, and a Visiting Researcher of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. She specializes in the history of science and technology and business history. Her current book project, Sensual Science: expertise, craft, and chemical invention in global perfumery, 1900-2000, focuses on the development of the perfume industry in the twentieth century. She is interested in the uses of machine learning to design and study scents. She completed her doctoral work in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at King’s College London and Imperial College London and holds a B.A. in Romance Languages and Literatures and Classics from Harvard University. She previously taught at the University of Tokyo as a Project Assistant Professor in the ALESS Program, Center for Research and Development of Higher Education.

Journalist / President, Digital Journalist Training Organization
Keiko Hamada joined the Asahi Shimbun in 1989, and has been a member of the AERA editorial department since 1999 and became Editor-in-Chief of AERA in 2014. After leaving Asahi Shimbun at the end of March 2017, she launched the Japanese edition of Business Insider, an online economic media company operating in 12 countries around the world, as Editor-in-Chief. She left Business Insider Japan at the end of 2020 and became a freelance journalist. In August 2022, she established a general incorporated association, the Digital Journalist Training Organization. She received the 2022 Social Journalist Award.
She has been a commentator on “The Shinichi Hatori Morning Show” and “Sunday Morning” and has given numerous lectures on diversity and other topics. Author of “Working Women and Guilt,” “The End of Male-Centered Businesses,” and “Before Clicking the Like Button: Internet Space and Media from the Gender Perspective” (co-author).

Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Sophia University. Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. Author of Welfare Through Work: Conservative Ideas, Partisan Dynamics, and Social Protection in Japan (Cornell University Press, 2012), “Persistence of Women’s Under-representation” (in Japan Decides 2017, Palgrave Mcmillan 2018), Making Our Voices Heard—Revival of Representative Democracy (in Japanese, Iwanami Shoten, 2015), editor of Japan’s Women Representatives (in Japanese, Asahi Shimbun Shuppansha, 2016), Investment in Society: Supporting Individuals and Building Communal Ties (in Japanese, Iwanami Shoten, 2018), co-editor of Gender Quotas in Comparative Perspectives: Understanding the Increase in Women Representatives (in Japanese, Akashi Shoten, 2014).

Yukiko Mishina is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, the University of Electro-Communications. She obtained her Ph.D. in chemistry at The University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Tokyo as Project Assistant Professor. Her main research involved chemical analyses of the structure and function of DNA repair proteins and development of imaging techniques for brain activities, but has now shifted her interest towards brain science and artificial intelligence, such as perception and cognitive bias in language learning, and science English language education.

Yuko Ikkatai is an associate professor of the Faculty of Human Sciences, Kanazawa University. Her research interest is public engagement in science and technology. She received her Ph.D at Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University. She studied social interactions in birds in the field of animal psychology as her Ph.D thesis, but her interest gradually shifted to human communication in science and technology.

Nozomi Ohtsuki is a PhD student in the Cultural and Human Information Studies Course of the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (GSII) at the University of Tokyo (Sakura Laboratory). Her research theme is inheritance of materials outside the museum system. In order to construct a theoretical framework for inheritance of materials in modern society, she studies how objects and digital data have been remaining outside existing systems or mechanisms of museum.
In B’AI, she would like to consider how the application of new technologies, including AI, can bring into focus things and people that have been omitted from existing frameworks. On the other hand, AI can exclude certain races and cultures and promote discrimination, so she considers this as well.

Priya is a doctoral student at Itatsu Lab, the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. She holds an MAS in Information studies (ITASIA program), an ME (Architecture) from the Department of Architecture (Obuchi Lab) at the University of Tokyo, a BAS (Architecture) from the University of Auckland and a BE (Civil Engineering) from Anna University, India. She has over three years of work experience as an architectural designer in New Zealand and more than two years of work experience in regional revitalization projects in regional Japan. In the past, Priya has worked on designing human-centric pavilions and researched the human-environment relationship, covering topics such as the experiences of migrant women in public spaces, cyclists’ behaviors, homelessness, dynamics within ethnic enclaves, and regional revitalization initiatives. Her current research focuses on how AI technologies such as GenAIs, influence the learning abilities of students in higher education, particularly focusing on design education.

Will is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. Before coming to the University of Tokyo, he studied chemistry and Asian studies at Cornell University and worked as a food scientist in Los Angeles, California. Will’s research is focused on the social impacts of new food technologies towards building more sustainable food systems.

Alyssa is a Master’s student at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. She is from the Philippines, and lived in Vietnam for 7 years. She graduated from University of Tokyo’s PEAK Japan in East Asia Program in 2022. Her undergraduate thesis was titled “Queering spatial awareness in post-pandemic Tokyo: Micro-level Counter-narratives in Shinjuku Ni-chome.” Her latest research interests are on queer orientations and spaces in Tokyo, finding linkages between AI, literature (especially speculative fiction), the built environment and how they can be used to disrupt oppressive systems.

Ginger is a Master’s student at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. She studied Anthropology at University of Connecticut in United States and worked at consulting firms focusing predominately on digital inclusion and climate change issues before joining the master’s program. Her research interests center around the emotional experiences and expression in intimate AI and human relationships.

Matthew Sueda is a graduate student member at the B’AI Global Forum and a current MA student at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo. He is from Hilo, Hawai’i and obtained his BA from Swarthmore College in Japanese language, literature and culture. He is interested in cultural studies and exploring representations of gender, race and ethnicity as they relate to digital information technologies including AI.