CV

Prof. Nissim Otmazgin is a scholar of Asian studies, specializes in Japanese and Korean contemporary culture and politics. Since 2021, he has served as the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Otmazgin has previously served as the Chair of the Institute for Asian and African Studies, as the Director of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and as the Chair of the Department of Asian Studies.

Otmazgin has been has been a visiting fellow at numerous academic institutions, including Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies in 2007,Cornell University's East Asia Program in 2009 and 2011, Sciences-Po’s Center for International Studies and Research in 2010, the National University of Singapore's department of Japanese Studies in 2011, the University of Sydney department of Japanese Studies in 2012, Dōshisha University's Faculty of Policy Studies in 2013,National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in 2014, Osaka University's Graduate School of Languages and Culture in 2015, Korea University's faculty of Liberal Arts in 2015, Kyoto University's institute for the Studies of Humanities in 2016, and Academia Sinica's department of Sociology in 2017.

Otmazgin's research interests include Japanese and Korean media industries, popular culture and regionalization in East Asia, Japan-Southeast Asian Relations, and cultural diplomacy in East Asia. His background in Political Science and East Asian Studies and throughout his studies he has been interested by the possibility of combining social science methodologies and area specialization with the goal of analyzing and explaining social and cultural phenomena.

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.

He has published articles in a number of international academic journals including International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Cross-Currents, Media, Culture & Society, Global Policy, Inter-Asia Cultural studies, Pacific Affairs, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific Review, Kritika Kultura, Asian Perspective, Situations, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Japan Focus, and Contemporary Japan. Otmazgin has a regular column in the Japanese magazine AERA available here (in Japanese)

 

Awards and Prizes

Otmazgin has received several research grants, including from the European Union's Marie Curie Program, the Israel Science Foundation, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Japan Foundation, the Korea Foundation, and the Taiwan Fellowship. In 2012, he was awarded the Hebrew University’s Ben-Porath Presidential Award for Outstanding Young Researcher.[1] He is a founding member and served as chair of the Israeli Association for Japanese Studies (IAJS), was a member of the Israeli Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2015-2019), and a member of the committee for the council of higher education for the advancement of Humanities (2018-2019).

In addition to these grants, he has won the Taiwan Fellowship Award to conduct field research in Taiwan in 2017, The Korea Foundation Award to conduct research in Korea in 2015, The Japan Foundation Award to conduct research in Japan in 2014. Additionally, Otmazgin has received the following awards.

  • Professor Yoram Ben-Porat's Presidential Award for Outstanding Young Researcher for the year 2012-2013.
  • Selected as a member of Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities' Young Scientists Forum in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2011)
  • Sir Zelman Cowen University Fund for academic exchange fellowship at The University of Sydney (2010).

 

Books

  • Daliot-Bul, Michal; Otmazgin, Nissim (2017). The anime boom in the United States : lessons for global creative industries. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center Press. ISBN 978-0-674-97699-3. OCLC 982089124
  • Otmazgin, Nissim (2014). Regionalizing culture : the political economy of Japanese popular culture in Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3906-2. OCLC 862135620

 

Edited Volumes

  • Otmazgin, Nissim, and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds. Creativity and Innovation in the Media and Cultural Industries. London: Springer, 2020.
  • Park, Gil-sung, Nissim Otmazgin and Keith Howard, eds. Transcultural Fandom and the Globalization of Hallyu. Seoul: Korea University Press, 2019.
  • Otmazgin, Nissim and Rebecca Suter, eds. Stories for the Nation: Rewriting History in Manga. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016.
  • Ben-Rafael Galanti, Sigal, Nissim Otmazgin and Alon Levkowitz, eds. Japan's Multilayered Democracy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014.
  • Otmazgin, Nissim, and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds. Popular Culture Co-productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press and Kyoto University Press, 2013.
  • Otmazgin, Nissim and Eyal Ben-Ari, eds. Popular Culture and the State in East and Southeast Asia. London: Routledge, 2012.

 

Selected publications