Rate My Professor Hidenori Watanave

Hidenori Watanave is a Professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at The University of Tokyo. He received a Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering in Architecture from the Tokyo University of Science and a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tsukuba. His career includes positions as a game creator at Sony Computer Entertainment, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Systems Design at Tokyo Metropolitan University, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and Visiting Associate Professor at Kyoto University. He assumed his current professorship in 2018 and serves as Deputy Director General of the Division for Strategic Communications at The University of Tokyo.

Watanave specializes in information design and digital archives, with research focusing on the visualization and social application of digital archives related to war and disaster. He has contributed to projects such as the Hiroshima Archive, satellite image maps documenting damage in Ukraine and the Türkiye-Syria earthquake, and 3D archives for Gaza. His work includes developing methods for fluidizing data and forming communities of memory through collaborative archiving efforts. Watanave has received awards including the 17th Japan Cartographers Association Award (Special Award), the 4th Japan Society for Digital Archive Award (Practice Award), the 11th Hiroshima Book Award, the 2016 Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Award, and the Grand Prix of the Journalism Innovation Awards in 2015 and 2016. He has also been recognized with jury selections at the Japan Media Arts Festival and a Good Design Award. Publications include co-authored books on colorized photographs of prewar and wartime Japan.