RYO MORIMOTO
Assistant Professor in Anthropology
Ryo Morimoto is a first-generation college graduate and scholar from Japan, an assistant professor in anthropology, and the 2026-2027 Cabot House Scholar-in-Residence at Harvard University. An environmental anthropologist and ethnographer of human-nuclear relations, his research examines the surreal social (half)life of radiation and radiological materials, uncovering hidden links among everyday nuclear practices, emerging technologies, and their lasting planetary impacts.
His interdisciplinary work spans environmental studies, disaster studies, semiotics, digital humanities, and “anthroengineering”—a field bridging anthropology and robotics. He is the award-winning author of Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima’s Gray Zone (California, 2023) and numerous articles in journals including Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Public Culture, Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, and Critical Asian Studies.
Professor Morimoto’s current research examines U.S.-Japan collaborations in physical AI and remote robotics in coastal Fukushima. His ethnography traces how industry, academia, and government deploy mobile robots to address urgent challenges: an aging population, labor shortages, disaster mitigation, and nuclear reactor decommissioning. He is also interested in the historical link between the nuclear industry and robotics, particularly the implications of robot-centered nuclear decommissioning at Fukushima for the future of remote technologies.
He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Foundation, and the Mansfield Foundation. He serves on the editorial collective of Cultural Anthropology (2026–2030) and is a 2026–2027 Impact Lab Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is developing an Anthroengineering Lab.
Professor Morimoto earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Before joining Harvard, he was an assistant professor at Princeton University, where he co-founded the student-led project Nuclear Princeton.