Jennifer Robertson is Professor Emerita (as of January 2020), Departments of Anthropology and the History of Art, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, and Robotics Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also Affiliate Member, Tokyo College, and Affiliate Professor, Departments of Anthropology and Japan Studies, University of Washington, Seattle. Formerly Japan Editor of Critical Asian Studies, she now serves on the Editorial Board (http://criticalasianstudies.org). A historical anthropologist/anthropological historian, her seven books and over ninety articles and chapters address a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary subjects ranging from the 17th century to the present. Her publications have been translated into German, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, and she regularly contributes to the international news and non-academic media in the form of interviews and essays.
Robertson resides in Seattle and is currently researching, writing, and editing articles on: the cultural history of Japanese eugenics; art, science, and technology; sex-gender systems; demystifying “artificial intelligence” and “autonomy”; and the various dimensions of human-robot interaction in Japan and elsewhere. An extension of her fieldwork and archival research on robotics includes a critical exploration of affective AI and embodied intimacy along with an investigation of the problems of algorithmic abstraction and the associated lack of nuance and intersectionality in AI applications. In addition, a new Japan-based project explores technologies of childbirth from the 1920s to 2020s.
2018 ROBO SAPIENS JAPANICUS: ROBOTS, GENDER, FAMILY AND THE JAPANESE NATION (University of California Press). A Korean translation forthcoming in spring 2023 from Nulmin Books Publishers.
2023 “I Am I Because My Little Aibo Knows Me: Animaloids, Identity, and Surveillance.” In Dictionnaire d’histoire critique des animaux, Pierre Serna, Benedetta Piassezi, Malik Mellah, eds., Paris : Champ Vallon. (In French, in press).
2022 “Technologies of Kokoro (Heartmind): Imagineering Human-Robot Coexistence. Perspectives from Japan.” ICON: Journal of the International Committee on the History of Technology 27(1): 53-80.
2022 “Imagineerism: Kinship, Robots, and Techno-Nationalism. Perspectives from Japan,” pp. 449-466. In Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology, Maja Hojer Bruun, Ayo Wahlberg, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Cathrine Hasse, Klaus Hoeyer, Dorthe Brogård Kristensen and Brit Ross Winthereikeds., New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2022 “From Tiramisù to #MeToo: Triangulations of Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Heisei Japan,” Chp. 14, pp.180-192. In Heisei Japan in Retrospect (1989-2019), Noriko Murai, Jeff Kingston, Tina Burrett, eds., New York: Routledge.
2021 “Robot Theatre (robotto engeki) in Japan: Staging Science Fiction Futures.” Mechademia: Second Arc 14 (1): 93-112. (Special issue on science fiction edited by Tatsuyuki Tatsumi.)
2020 “Gotai: Corporeal Aesthetics and Robotic Exoskeletons in Japan,” pp. 5-20. Designing Humans, Designing Robots. Cathrine Hasse and Dorte Marie Søndergaard, eds., London & New York: Routledge.
2018 “Edible Eugenics: Dietary Reform and Nation-building in Modern Japan” pp. 240-262. Jahrbuch für Kulinaristik: The German Journal of Food Studies and Hospitality. Band 2. (Special issue on the globalization of East Asian culinary culture.)
2012 “Hemato-Nationalism: The Past, Present, and Future of ‘Japanese Blood’.” Medical Anthropology 31(2) 93-112.
2012 “From Uniqlo to NGOs: The Problematic ‘Culture of Giving’ in Inter-Disaster Japan.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 18, No. 2. Available online at http://japanfocus.org/-Jennifer-Robertson/3747.
