Maiko Mori Watanabe
Department of General Education in Medical School of Jichi Medical University, Japan

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Maiko Mori Watanabe is a lecturer and the director of division of ethics at the Department of General Education in Medical School of Jichi Medical University. She is also a visiting fellow of the Interfaculty Initiatives of Information Studies of the University of Tokyo. 

She started her carrier as a research fellow of the national research project on the ethics of Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing in Japan, before moving to the public policy section of the Bio Bank Japan, which stores DNA and medical information of patients with specific conditions. After teaching at the University of Tokyo as a project assistant professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, she moved to Harvard University to be a visiting scholar at the Department of the History of Science. During her one and a half year of stay in Harvard, she translated the book on the history of sex chromosome by Sarah S. Richardson, Sex Itself, into Japanese, introducing Richardson’s concept of gender critical science to Japanese audiences. The translated book was published in Japan at the end of last year.

From the new academic year in Japan that starts at the first of April, she is responsible for teaching ethics to medical students in Jichi Medical University. The university has the unique mission of training medical professionals to serve for local communities in needs of physicians, mainly in the depopulating areas in the country with varieties of social problems any aging societies have to face in the near future. She is now interested in studying ethical issues in applying advanced medical knowledge and technology to tackle those social problems.