معرفی
Gabriele Koch is an Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Oslo, specializing in sociocultural anthropology. Her work focuses on care labor, gendered economies, and the intersection of sex work with political-economic structures in contemporary Japan. She holds a tenured position and has contributed significantly to understanding the social and moral dimensions of labor in marginalized sectors.
Her research includes an award-winning monograph *Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy* (2020), which explores how sex workers conceptualize their labor as care work. Current projects examine therapeutic uses of forests and evolving human-forest relations in Japan.
Key publications include analyses of legal frameworks governing Japan's sex industry and the moral rhetoric shaping workers' identities. Koch has received the 2022 John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for her groundbreaking scholarship.
Her academic profile emphasizes ethnographic methods, with interdisciplinary engagement spanning anthropology, gender studies, and environmental humanities. Teaching and research interests include critical approaches to care work, globalization, and cultural studies of the body.
