This panel emerges from an initiative of the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation, a new research institute at Cambridge currently in its design phase. One of the Institute’s core aims is to foster global dialogues that might not otherwise occur, with the goal of advancing an agenda centred on what we term relational racisms and cultivating deeper explorations of what racial literacy might look like in different contexts. Recognizing that research on racism is inherently intersectional, and mindful of the significant body of scholarship addressing gender, sexism, and discrimination in Japan, this event seeks to experiment with a conversational format that bridges critical perspectives on race and gender.
Scholars from the Universities of Tokyo, Ritsumeikan, Kansai Gaidai, Kobe, Keio, and Cambridge will come together to collectively assess the current landscape of intersectional research on race and gender in Japan. Drawing on research and analyses from Mexico and Latin America, the session will also explore opportunities for co-developing new research trajectories, collaborative programs, and experimental initiatives.
Research on racism and intersectional oppressions worldwide urgently requires a global dialogue—one that dismantles notions of exceptionality and establishes common ground for examining how processes of dehumanization permeate social systems, albeit through varied terminological and analytical lenses. While dehumanization manifests in many forms, its racialized and gendered dimensions—viewed through an intersectional framework—provide a crucial starting point for building such common ground.
Venue: TBA
Click HERE for the Program
Speakers
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
University of Cambridge
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa is a Black-mestiza, Mexican-British Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College. Her research explores the intersectional lived experiences of ‘race’ and racism in Mexico and Latin America, antiracism and academic-based impact, feminist theory, and intersectionality.
Mónica is currently leading the development of the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation (GRIST) at Cambridge, which aims to address global racisms and intersectional social inequalities through actionable research, dialogue, and experimentation.
Mónica’s recent work includes editing Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America (2022) and her most recent project, funded by the British Academy The Structure Within: Internalised Oppression, Defensiveness, and Resentment. She also co-leads the Collective for the Elimination of Racism in Mexico (COPERA), a non-profit organization where activists and scholars work collaboratively to eliminate racism in Mexico.
Akiko Shimizu
Professor
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
The University of Tokyo
SHIMIZU Akiko is a professor of feminist and queer theories at the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. As the head of Diversity and Inclusion Division at the Komaba Organization for Educational Excellence (KOMEX), she is in charge of the DE&I related education for the junior division (first- and second-year undergraduate), as well as supervising graduate students. With her graduate students, she has hosted a public lecture series on queer studies (“autumn queer lectures at Komaba campus” as the regular attendants call them) for nearly fifteen years now. Her research interests are: feminist theories of bodies and self-representation; post-colonial feminism and cultural interpretation; anti-gender movements in Japan; proximity, fear and the possibility of coalition. Her most recent publications include: “Towards intersectionality without security: a note towards coexistence”(JPN), TSUCHIYA kazuyo and ISAKA Rie eds. Intersectionality: Interlocking power relations in the contemporary world, UTP, 2024; “The thorn going stealth: For the queer politics of plurality that may not appear”(JPN), Shisou, 2020; ‘“Imported” Feminism and “Indigenous” Queerness: From Backlash to Transphobic Feminism in Transnational Japanese Context’ (Eng), Journal of Gender Studies, 2020; “From Backlash to Online Trans-exclusionism: Response to the lecture by Prof. Peto”(Eng), Gender and Sexuality: Journal of the Center for Gender Studies, 2019. She is a translator (into Japanese) of Judith Butler’s Frames of War and Who’s Afraid of Gender? She has also been invited to give a public lecture, including China (Nanjing University), Germany (Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf), Australia (The University of Melbourne), and U.S. (U.C. Berkeley). She loves spending time with her two dogs, a very good-looking, tidy and socially awkward gay toy poodle, and a happy-go-lucky, messy and sloppy Havanese puppy (whose SOGI is still unknown).
Aki Son-Katada
Associate Professor
Department of Social Sciences
Ritsumeikan University
Aki Son-Katada (Aki Sohn-Katada) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences and the Graduate School of Sociology, Ritsumeikan University. She studies multiculturalism in contemporary Japan, the experiences and collective identities of Zainichi Koreans as a racialized postcolonial minority group in Japan, and the history of anti-discrimination social movements by Korean and Japanese citizens. Her doctoral work focused on the educational discourse on “the problem” of Korean children in Japanese schools. She has been involved in the local social movements and grassroots activities in Korean communities in Kyoto for the past twenty years. Recently, she has started a small action group to work on DE&I on campus with her colleagues and students who wants to make the voices of LGBTQ+, immigrants, and other minority members heard.
Christopher Tso
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Economics
Keio University
Christopher Tso received his MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge and is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Economics at Keio University, Japan. His research takes a qualitative sociological approach to explore masculinities in contemporary Japanese society. In particular, his doctoral work focused on corporate Japan, investigating the intersections of masculinities, bodies, and race, while his current project analyses corporate masculinities and gendered harassment and violence in Japan.
Hiroki Ogasawara
Professor in Sociology and Cultural Studies
Graduate School of Intercultural Studies
Kobe University
Gained PhD in sociology under supervisions of Paul Gilroy and Les Back at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Main research concerns are: race and racism in popular culture, sociology of sport and the body, modern social thought, and politics and the media.
Publications includes: in Japanese Speak the Truth in Its Full Complexity: The Thought of Stuart Hall (monograph, 2019), We No Longer Need Olympics (co-authored, 2019) , Anti Tokyo Olympic Manifesto (co-authored, 2016), Celtic Fandom: Football Cultures and Racism in Glasgow (monograph, 2017) among other books and articles . The most recent one is “The Thought of Alterity: From Football to Fanon, and towards Anti-racism and ‘New Human’” in Shisou, February 2025, Iwanani Publisher. In English "Marx, and Marxism as Method in Stuart Hall's Thinking" in Inter Asia Cultural Studies, Vo.18, Issue 2 (2017) and many other journal articles and book contributions. While teaching Media and Cultural Studies, Ogasawara’s been involved in anti-Olympic movements since Tokyo was handed in to the right to host the game in the summer of 2020. His current concern is with the spectacle and alterity.
Kazuyoshi Kawasaka
Independent researcher
Dr Kazuyoshi Kawasaka is an independent researcher and was the principal investigator of the DFG-funded project at the Institute for Modern Japanese studies in Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany (‘Sexual Diversity and Human Rights in 21st Century Japan: LGBTIQ Activisms and Resistance from a Transnational Perspective’]), from 2020 to 2024. His research interests include nationalism and queer politics in Japan, globalization of LGBTIQ politics, and transnational anti-gender/LGBTIQ movements. He is a co-editor of Beyond Diversity: Queer Politics, Activism, and Representation in Contemporary Japan (Düsseldorf University Press, 2024).
Sachi Takaya
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
The University of Tokyo
Sachi Takaya is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo. Her research interests include irregular migration and bordering, migration and gender, membership and belonging of migrants, and migration policy in the context of East Asia. She has published a monograph on undocumented migrants and border politics in postwar Japan and has edited several books on migration policy and migration control (in Japanese). Her recent publications include “Policy Change and National Identification: The discursive institutionalism of the migrant admission policy shift in Japan” in Social Science Japan Journal (forthcoming), and “Intersectional belongings: Experiences of Filipino mothers in Japan” Gendai Shiso (2022) (in Japanese). She has been involved in migrant rights movements and grassroots activities to promote the rights and dignity of migrants and refugees for the past twenty years.
Tomomi Yamaguchi
Professor
College of International Relations
Ritsumeikan University
Tomomi Yamaguchi is a Professor at the College of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University, and Associate Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Montana State University. She recently joined Ritsumeikan, after living in the United States for nearly 30 years. At MSU, she contributed to advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) as a member of committees in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the College of Letters and Science. She also directed Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. As a cultural anthropologist, her research focuses on feminism, nationalism, and social movements in contemporary Japan. Her work includes ethnographic studies of grassroots right-wing movements, right-wing backlash against feminism, xenophobic ultranationalist movements, and the ongoing debate on wartime “comfort women.” Her recent publications include “Ramseyer, the Japanese Right Wing, and the ‘History Wars’” in Pyong Gap Min (ed.), Countering History Denialism: The Assault on Truth about “Comfort Women,” (Singapore: World Scientific, 2025), “Abe and the Unification Church: Opposing Gender Equality and LGBTQ+ Rights.” (The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, Vol. 20, Issue 16., September 15, 2022), and (co-authored with Saitō Masami in Japanese), Shūkyō uha to feminizumu (Religious Right-wing and Feminism), (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2023). She is a member of the editorial board of the Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, a regional editor of Critical Asian Studies, and a board member of the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center based in Tokyo.
Yasuko Takezawa
Professor of Anthropology
Director of the Intercultural Research Institute
Kansai Gaidai University
Yasuko Takezawa is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Intercultural Research Institute at Kansai Gaidai University, and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University.
She has been leading a series of large international collaborative research projects on race and racism over the past two decades. As visiting professor, she has taught on race/racism at various universities outside of Japan as well, including MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Heidelberg University, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) where she is currently teaching. She is a member of Science Council of Japan (SCJ). Her latest book in Japanese is Racism in America: Formation and Transformation of Categories and Identities (Nagoya U Press, 2023) and her latest co-edited book in English is Visibilities and Invisibilities of Race and Racism (Routledge, 2025).
Her other publications in English include:
・Race and Migration in the Transpacific (co-edited with Akio Tanabe). London: Routledge.
・Transpacific Japanese American Studies: Dialogues on Race and Racializations (co-edited with Gary Okihiro). Honolulu: U of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
・Racial Representations in Asia (ed. ). Kyoto/ Melbourne: Kyoto University Press/ Trans Pacific Press, 2011.
・Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.