Ekaterina Hertog

Ekaterina’s research interests lie at the intersection of digital sociology and family sociology. She leads the ESRC-funded DomesticAI project that scopes new technologies’ potential to free up time now locked into unpaid domestic labour and measures how willing people are to introduce these technologies into their private lives.

First research findings offering predictions about the transformative potential of domestic automation have been published in PLOS ONE as The future(s) of unpaid work: How susceptible do experts from different backgrounds think the domestic sphere is to automation and Technological Forecasting and Social Change as The future of unpaid work: Estimating the effects of automation on time spent on housework and care work in Japan and the UK.

Hertog’s earlier study of never-married single mothers in Japan that provides an in-depth analysis of Japanese women’s decision-making on childbearing issues and the related value systems was published as a book by Stanford University Press titled Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Contemporary Japan. Her other research includes analyses of gender differences in time use in East Asia and an investigation of digital dating records from one of Japan’s largest matchmakers to scrutinise partner search processes, identifying the social factors that drive individual success and failure on the Japanese marriage market. She has published in journals such as the Journal of Marriage and Family, Demographic Research, and PLOS ONE.