Harvard Anthropology Seminar Series: Ryo Morimoto (Princeton University)

Ryo Morimoto is a first-generation college graduate and scholar from Japan and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Richard Stockton Bicentennial Preceptor at Princeton University. His scholarly work addresses the planetary impacts of our past, present, and future engagements with nuclear things.

Regionally centered on Japan, Morimoto’s research creates spaces, languages, and archives to think with nuclear things as part of living and dying in the late industrial and postfallout era. He grounds his work in a range of theoretical frameworks—including semiotic anthropology, anthropology of disaster, environmental anthropology, anthropology and the recent history of Japan, anthropology of science and technology, Indigenous studies, and digital humanities.

In 2023, Morimoto published his first ethnographic monograph, Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima’s Gray Zone. His second book project explores the U.S.-Japan transnational history of disaster robotics and an ethnography of decommissioning robots in coastal Fukushima. Morimoto is a co-founder of the Native undergraduate students-led project Nuclear Princeton.