Prof. Nissim Otmazgin is the the Director of the Institute for Asian and African Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Associate Director of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. He is also a member of the Israeli Young Academy of Science and Humanities. Between 2014-2018, he was the Chair of the Department of Asian Studies, also at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A political scientist in training, his research interests include Japanese popular culture in Asia, popular culture and regionalization in East and Southeast Asia, Japan-Southeast Asian relations, and cultural industry and cultural policy in Japan and South Korea. His PhD dissertation (Kyoto University, 2007), which examines the export of Japan’s popular culture to Asia, won the Iue Asia Pacific Research Prize in October 2007 for outstanding dissertation on society and culture in Asia. As a part of this research, he conducted extensive fieldwork in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Seoul.
