Rate My Professor Akihiro Ogawa

Ogawa specializes in civil society, public policy, peace and security, democracy, and grassroots movements in contemporary Japan and broader Asia. He employs ethnographic methods and social science theory to examine state-society relations, lifelong learning, and anti-nuclear activism. Key publications include his award-winning book, The Failure of Civil Society?: The Third Sector and the State in Contemporary Japan (State University of New York Press, 2009), recipient of the 2010 Japan NPO Research Association Book Award; Lifelong Learning in Neoliberal Japan: Risk, Knowledge, and Community (SUNY Press, 2015); and Antinuclear Citizens: Sustainability Policy and Grassroots Activism in Post-Fukushima Japan (Stanford University Press, 2023). Among his edited volumes are Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia (Routledge, 2017), Transnational Civil Society in Asia (Routledge, 2021), Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Asia (Routledge, 2022), and Varieties of Civil Society Across Asia (Routledge, 2024). Ogawa leads the Asian Civil Society Research Network and currently holds a research professor appointment at Kyoto University’s Office of Research Acceleration (April 2025 onwards), directing “The Kyoto Roundtable for Japan, Australia & India: Trilateral Academic Dialogue.”