I study the development of sciences and technologies, currently specializing in Japanese robotics engineering and AI. My research has been funded by the NSF, the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science, the Japan Foundation, and the Catalyst award. I have held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, Tokyo University, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. An advocate for engaged scholarship, I maintain that diachronic analysis of scientific and technological developments is an essential step towards sustainable, just, and unbiased future design.

In my current research, I explore the role of emotions in the development of robotics in Japan by looking at how emotions shaped the decisions of engineers, policymakers, and potential consumers. I show that economic anxieties drove industry leaders to take risks with experimental technologies that worked poorly; that class and gender biases affected engineers’ design choices and became embedded in robotic structure, function, and appearance; that engineers designed robots to emulate agency and empathy with the goal of eliciting affection and inducing attachment in consumers; and that despite the promises of labor-saving technologies, humans generally end up picking up the slack.

My research on emotions in Japanese robotics has resulted in a series of publications. In Animating Action (Hawaiʻi, 2026), my co-authors and I explain the variety of techniques humans use to animate the world around them. My single-authored monograph, forthcoming with University of Pittsburgh Press, focuses on emotions, labor, biases, and the pursuit of productivity. Articles on the topic have appeared in History & Technology (and here), EASTS, IEEE Spectrum, Slate, and as book chapters.

My first book, Making Time: Astronomical Time in Tokugawa Japan (Chicago, 2018), was a methodological prelude to my current work. While my current research examines the relationship between the materiality of robots and emotions, in Making Time I looked at astronomers’ conceptualization of time in the context of their evolving material, visual, and practical environments.

My interest in hidden, taken-for granted, and subjective factors that shape scientific and technological practices stems from my personal background. I was born in Tallinn, Estonia, and have lived in—and immigrated to—numerous countries since then. Fluent in four languages and conversant in several others, I am fascinated by the subtle differences in the meanings attached to terms that at first glance appear to be directly translatable. I have become aware of the fact that those varying meanings are not restricted to words alone but are reliant on a larger set of social practices, material environments, and linguistic metaphors. This awareness has had a profound effect on my research interests in cross-cultural knowledge and technology transfer, scientific translation, and comparative technologies. My personal experiences moving between languages, cultural norms, and built environments has provided a fertile ground for my approach to knowledge as embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended.

For more information on my book, Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan, go to: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo27442023.html

Op-Ed: “What Tesla’s Robot Tells Us about Bias in Design,” published in Slate/Future Tense, October 24, 2022,
https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/tesla-optimus-robot-design-labor-elon-musk.html

“Manufacturing Hands: Robot Fingers and Human Labour in Post-War Japan.” History & Technology, no. Special Issue: Making History (2022): 239–256. DOI: 10.1080/07341512.2022.2129279

“The Short, Strange Life of the First Friendly Robot,” IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 57. Issue 6 (June 2020): 42-48. https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/the-short-strange-life-of-the-first-friendly-robot

“The 4th IR, Humanoid Robots, and the Politics of Labor Concealment in Japan” in Medium, “What’s at Stake in a 4th Industrial Revolution?,” March 25, 2019. https://medium.com/whats-at-stake-in-a-fourth-industrial-revolution/the-4th-ir-humanoid-robots-and-the-politics-of-labor-concealment-in-japan-325ca04923af

“Cognition and Emotions in Japanese Humanoid Robotics,” History and Technology, Volume 34, issue 3 (2018): 1-27. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07341512.2018.1544344

“Translating Words, Building Worlds: Meteorology in Japanese, Chinese, and Dutch.”  Isis, Volume 109, Number 2. (June 2018): 1-7. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697993

“Japanese Reverse Compasses: Grounding Cognition in History and Society.” Science in Context, Volume 31, Number 2. (June 2018): 155-187. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889718000157

“Translating Time: Habits of Western Style Timekeeping in Late Tokugawa Japan” in Technology and Culture, Volume 55, Number 4, October 2014, pp. 785-820.

“Before Words: Reading Western Astronomical Texts in Early 19th Century Japan” in  Annals of Science, July 2016. Available online