Political Sociology
Applied Ethics
Human Enhancement
Transhumanism
Algorithmic Decision-Making
AI Ethics
Governmentality
epistemic justice
Information Society
Science and Technology Studies
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4 2023 - PresentCollege of Arts Department of Education Specially Appointed Associate Professor
English Profile (Recommended Version)
I am a political sociologist and applied ethicist whose research examines how technologies and institutional arrangements reconfigure the normative standards by which human emotions, judgments, and autonomy are organized and evaluated.
My work is centrally concerned with the shifting boundary at which interventions move from “supporting” human capacities to “instrumentalizing” them, and with the processes through which such shifts come to be perceived as legitimate. Rather than asking what technologies enable, I focus on why technologically mediated forms of judgment come to be accepted as normatively valid. This question provides the conceptual thread that runs through my research.
At the core of my work is the study of human enhancement (HE), which I approach not merely as a means of improving individual capacities, but as a framework that links processes of human formation with the design of social institutions. My research addresses issues such as cognitive enhancement in education and epistemic justice, moral enhancement and the conditions for cooperative social relations, and neuro-enhancement of love and the reconfiguration of intimacy. Across these domains, I interrogate the very criteria by which “support” is distinguished from “manipulation.”
This line of inquiry extends beyond human enhancement. I also examine how predictive algorithms shape the distribution of life chances in credit systems, how information technologies intersect with disciplinary power in social credit regimes, how matching algorithms transform the autonomy of intimate relationships, and how the moral and institutional status of social AI should be understood. Across these diverse contexts, I seek to rethink how normative standards are formed, why they are accepted, and who is made to bear their consequences.
Ultimately, my research aims to provide a theoretical foundation for reconfiguring technologies and institutions in ways that enhance human values and collective flourishing, rather than subordinating human life to technological systems.
In addition to my academic work, I have professional experience in a private think tank and at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). My engagement with real-world projects has sharpened my interest in the frictions between institutional design and on-the-ground implementation—how normative frameworks are received, negotiated, and sometimes resisted in practice—which continues to inform my theoretical work.