Hiroaki Richard Watanabe

Dr. Watanabe received a PhD from the University of Oxford in 2009 and joined the School of East Asian Studies in 2010. He is a specialist of Japanese/comparative political economy and the international relations of East Asia and the Asia Pacific. He has conducted research on comparative politics of labour market deregulation in Japan and Italy, labour’s social movement as a response to deteriorating working conditions in East Asia, Japan’s regulatory reforms in financial markets, the comparative political economy of working poor, and the Sino-Japanese economic rivalry in pursuit of economic leadership in East Asia in the context of the rise of China and the regional economic integration. Before he moved to academia, he was a legal analyst in a multinational Japanese trading company. He has travelled to around 80 countries (in addition to living in the United States, Australia, Italy and Japan).