Faculty

Visiting Research Scholars

Fabio Raphael GYGI
Specialized Field(s)	Medical Anthropology, Material Culture, Science and Technology Studies, Gender
Current Research Themes	The Future of Religion: Technologies of the Imagination and Buddhism in Contemporary Japan
Keywords for Research	Religion, Anthropology of the Future, Technology

2010	Ph.D., Social Anthropology, Humanities, University College London (UCL)

2010	Assistant Professor in Sociology, Doshisha University
2013	Senior Lecturer, SOAS University of London
2026	Visiting Research Scholar, International Research Center for Japanese Studies

2010	M.A., Universität Tübingen

Co-authored Books

Articles

・ The Animation of Nature and the Nature of Animation: The Life of Made Objects from the "Record of Tool Spectres" to the "Night Parade of Hundred Demons", Religions Vol 16 Nr 12, 2025, pp.1-20
・ Robots in the Wild: An Ethnography of Robot-Human Interactions outside the Laboratory, FFJ Discusion Papers20, FFJ/EHESS, Paris, 2023, pp.1-30
・ Locating Hoarding: How Spatial Concepts Shape Disorders in Japan and the Anglophone World, Of Hoarding and Housekeeping: Material Kinship and Domestic Space in Anthropological Perspective, edited by Sasha Newell, Berghahn, New York / Oxford, 2023, pp.119-142
・ The Afterlives of Dolls: On the Productive Death of Terminal Commodities, Ars Orientalis 52, 2023, pp.197-221
・ Gender, Substance, Fantasy: Undisciplined Observations on Gender Presentations in Japan, The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan, edited by Marianne Gitte Hansen and Fabio Gygi, NUS Press, Singapore, 2022, pp.256-269

Show all Achievements

・ The Great Heisei Doll Massacre: Disposal and the Production of Ignorance in Contemporary Japan, Buddhism and Waste: The Excess, Discard, and Afterlife of Buddhist Consumption, edited by Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg, Bloomsbury, London, 2022, pp.103-124
・ Falling in and out of Love with Stuff: Affective Affordance and Horizontal Transcendence in Styles of Decluttering in Japan, Japanese Studies 42/2, 2022, pp.195-212
・ Hôtes et Otages: Entasser des objets chez soi dans le Japon contemporain, L’Homme: Revue française d’anthropologie 231-232, 2019, pp.151-171
・ Robot Companions: The Animation of Technology and the Technology of Animation in Japan, Rethinking Relations and Animism: Personhood and Materiality, edited by Graham Harvey and Miguel Astor-Aguilera, Routledge, London, 2018, pp.94-111
・ The Metamorphosis of Excess: “Rubbish Houses” and the Imagined Trajectory of Things in Post-Bubble, Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan: A Transdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka and Ewa Machotka, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2018, pp.129-151
・ Things That Believe: Talismans, Amulets, Dolls, and How to Get Rid of Them, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45/2, 2018, pp.423-452

Co-authored Articles

Other Publications

・ Social Dreaming in Japan: Some Thoughts on Sharing Dreams as a Form of Experiential Learning, 東京外国語大学国際日本学研究 2, TUFS, 東京, 2022, pp.1-11
・ Mnemonic Monsters Redux: Traumatic Signature and the Afterlife of Image-Objects in Japanese Popular Culture, Global Perspectives on Japan 1, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, 2017, pp.127-154
・ The Memory That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Memory, Monsters and Oblivion in Japanese Popular Culture, Semiotic Review 2, 2016, pp.1-12
・行為者としての「モノ」ーエージェンジーの概念の拡張に関する一考察, 同志社社会学研究 15, 同志社大学, 京都, 2011, pp.1-12