Asa ITO
Director, Future of Humanity Research Center, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Asa Ito is Director of the Future of Humanity Research Center at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Institute of Innovative Research, and Visiting Scholar at MIT (2019), specializing in aesthetics and contemporary art. After initially intending to become a biologist, she turned her academic focus to the arts while in her third year at university. She obtained her PhD in Literature in 2010, having studied aesthetics, fine arts, and culture at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology. As author, Dr. Ito’s major works include Me no mienai hito wa sekai wo do miteiru no ka (How Do People Without Sight See the World?, Kobunsha), Domoru karada (The Stuttering Body, Igaku-Shoin), Kioku suru karada (The Remembering Body, Shunjusha), and Te no Rinri（Ethics of hands, Kodan-sha）. Her work was recognized with the 42nd Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2020.
★English article about her study
-Trying to find a sense of the body in the 21st century(Wochi-Kochi)
https://www.wochikochi.jp/english/foreign/2016/06/forms-of-communication-born-out-of-our-differences.php
-A New Worldview Born from Unseen Senses —The Body as Seen Through the Eyes of Disabled People—(JST)
https://www.jst.go.jp/inter/washington/docs/sw_english_2020_twopageview.pdf
-What does "diversity" really mean? A talk with Associate Professor Asa Ito(Tokyo Tech)
https://www.titech.ac.jp/english/public-relations/research/stories/next02-ito
-Touch and Human Relationships in the Touch-Deprived Era of COVID-19(nippon.com)
https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00678/
-Exploring a Democratic Creation and Our Experiment(s)(YouFab)
https://www.youfab.info/2021/exploring-a-democratic-creation-and-our-experiments.html