Yasushi Watanabe

He earned a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Harvard University in 1997 with a dissertation on "Nurturing A Context: The Logic of Individualism and the Negotiation of the Familial Sphere in the United States.

He attained the rank of full professor in 2005, and is one of Japan's most prominent experts on cultural policy, public diplomacy, and American Studies.

During the 2003–04 academic years, he was a recipient of an Abe Fellowship, which he held at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

[3] He served as a Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge in 2007, a visiting professor at Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Science-Po) in 2013 and a Japan Scholar at the Wilson Center in 2018.

He has also served as an editorial member of Gaiko (Diplomacy) magazine, a book reviewer for Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, a member of the board of directors (program director) at the International House of Japan, and a co-chair of the Japan Advisory Council of the Salzburg Global Seminar, among many others.