Yasushi WATANABE (Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University; Director, International House of Japan)
After graduating from Sophia University, Professor Watanabe earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University. After conducting post-doctoral research at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, he joined Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). He has also held research and/or teaching positions at Harvard and Peking Universities and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris（Sciences Po). Areas of specialization include American studies, cultural policy, public diplomacy, and cultural anthropology. He won the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities for Afuta Amerika: Bosutonian no kiseki to “bunka no seijigaku” (After America: Trajectories of the Bostonians and the Politics of Culture, Keio University Press, 2004) based on interviews with white Americans. He conducts multilayered research and offers policy proposals on cultural and diplomatic issues, drawing on observations gleaned from interviews with people living in the community and examining the possibilities of public diplomacy in an increasingly diverse and globalized society.He is the author of Bunka to gaiko: Paburikku dipuromashi no jidai (Culture and Diplomacy: The Age of Public Diplomacy, Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2011), Bunka o toraenaosu: Karuchuraru sekyuriti no hasso (Rethinking of “Culture”: On the Concept of Cultural Security, Iwanami Shoten, 2015) and other books. Hakujin nashonarizumu: Amerika o yurugasu “bunkateki hando” (White Nationalism: The Cultural Backlash that Rocked America, Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2020). His most recent publication is Amerika towa nanika jigazou to sekaikan wo meguru soukoku (Iwanami-Shinsho, 2022).