Ai Hisano

Ai Hisano is an Associate Professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies within the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, Japan. She specializes in cultural and business history, with a focus on capitalism, technology, and sensory experience. Her research explores how businesses shape consumer culture through visual and sensory aesthetics, particularly in the food industry. Hisano holds a PhD in History from the University of Delaware, where she focused on the historical interplay between capitalism and visual aesthetics in food production.

Her academic career includes postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Business School and teaching positions at Kyoto University. She has received prestigious awards, including the Hagley Prize in Business History (2020) and the Shimizu Hiroshi Book Award (2020) for her book Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat. She has authored numerous articles on topics such as emotional labor in early 20th-century Japanese retail, the role of cellophane in self-service food retailing, and the standardization of food colors in the U.S.

Her research interests extend to the history of the senses, consumer capitalism, and interdisciplinary approaches to business history. Hisano has led international workshops, served on editorial boards for journals like Enterprise & Society, and contributed to media discussions on food aesthetics and consumer culture.