Research Degrees Leader

  • Doctoral College
  • Research
Dr Yoriko Otomo

As Research Degrees Leader Yoriko is overseeing the transformation of the Doctoral College into a unique values-led institution at the heart of UCA’s vibrant research culture.

Dr Yoriko Otomo

Bio

Yoriko brings to UCA nearly twenty years of academic experience in law and interdisciplinary practice, with a strong international reputation for her work. Notably, she founded the Global Research Network, a non-profit dedicated to supporting research students and early career scholars around the world.

She was previously a tenured Senior Lecturer at SOAS Law School, University of London, and has undertaken research at the University of Oxford, Birkbeck, LSE and the University of New South Wales. She holds a BA/LLB(Hons) and PhD (Laws) from the University of Melbourne.

Career highlights include the publication of a monograph with Oxford University Press, two edited collections (with Routledge and Bloomsbury Press), and over 26 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Her research is informed by theories of gender, materiality, and archival research on imperial rule.

Yoriko is on the editorial boards of Bloomsbury and Heliyon Press, Board Member of Minding Animals International, and Governor for the Canterbury Academy Trust. She recently collaborated on an interdisciplinary public installation ‘Silent Parties’ for the Court of Arhus in Denmark (now on tour); a performance with the artist and poet Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos at the Tate Modern, and a performance of prose poetry at Birkbeck Cinema.

She has given over a hundred papers internationally by invitation and appeared in two documentaries.

Research statement

Yoriko’s most recent project on milk contextualises the fluid within a history of its regulation, tracing the role of state intervention in shifting milk feeding from the domestic to the public and to the international sphere; from the sacred and precious to the surplus and profane; and from corporeal matter to industrial material. She is currently working on two books (one co-authored with Martin Clark, another an edited Handbook for Routledge Press) and developing a creative practice.

Research supervision

Yoriko is able to supervise on the following topics: critical theories/philosophy; feminist and gender theories; human/animal studies; law; British colonial histories.