Editors

About the Editor

Sawako Shirahase is a professor of sociology at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo. She is also the senior vice-rector, United Nations University; and assistant secretary-general, United Nations.

Prof. Shirahase received her D.Phil. in sociology from the University of Oxford in 1997 and joined the University of Tokyo in 2006. She became a professor at the Department of Sociology in 2010. In 2018, she served as vice president of the University of Tokyo, where she was an executive vice president for international affairs for two years beginning in 2019. She is currently director of the University of Tokyo Center for Contemporary Japanese Studies.

Her main research interests include social stratification and social demography, inequality in income and wealth, and family and social security systems in cross-national perspectives. She has run several large research projects as a principal investigator. They are (1) the research project titled “A Comprehensive Study Examining the Forms of Social Stratification in an Aging Society and Constructing Public Norms” (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S), 2008–2012); (2) the research project titled “A Comprehensive Study of the Structural Change in Social Stratification and the Mechanism of Generating Inequality in an Aging Society with Low Fertility” (Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research, 2013–2017); and (3) research under the title “An Empirical Research on How to Generate the Structure of Social Stratification in an Aged Society with Low Fertility,” (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, 2018–2020).

Dr. Shirahase has published books and articles on these issues, including The Structure of Stratification in an Aged Society with Low Fertility, Vols. 1–3 (ed.) (2021, University of Tokyo Press); Todai Juku: Demography and Society: Looking for the Future in Japan (ed.) (2019, University of Tokyo Press); Social Inequality in Japan (2014, Routledge); Demographic Change and Inequality in Japan (ed.) (2011, Trans Pacific Press); “Social Stratification Theory and Population Aging Reconsidered” (2021, Social Science Japan Journal); “Income inequality among older people in rapidly aging Japan” (2014, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 41:1–15); and Social Stratification in an Aging Society with Low Fertility: The Case of Japan (2022, Springer).