phd thesis

Title: Ikigai: Negotiating Autonomy, Egg Freezing, and Reproductive Decision Making in Contemporary Japan

PhD Supervisor: Aditya Bharadwaj

Expected completion date: 2026

Sachiyo’s doctoral thesis examines how egg freezing is mobilized in relation to cultural values, local practices, and social norms within the Japanese context of demographic anxieties. Drawing on ethnographic accounts collected during 18 months of fieldwork in Japan, she asks what is medicalized through egg freezing, through what kind of discourses, what motivates women to pursue egg freezing, and how cultural values surrounding motherhood and reproduction are continually challenged and reimagined. Moving beyond the framing of egg freezing as an individual choice, her research illustrates how women’s reproductive choices and decisions are embedded in relationships, communities, and the medical, political, and moral institutions with which they engage in everyday life.
 

Profile 

Sachiyo is a medical anthropologist specializing in reproduction, gender, and kin-making in Japan. Her research explores medicalized, politicized, and commercialized dimensions of reproductive technologies and examines how they are experienced in everyday life, shaping reproductive discourses and practices. 
 

Areas of expertise
 

• Medical Anthropology
• Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs)
• Reproductive Politics, Gender and Kinship
• Tradition and Modernity
   

research interests
 

• Biomedicine
• Reproductive Politics
• Gender and Technology
• Kinship Studies
• Demographic Anxieties
• Tradition and Modernity

ACADEMIC  EXPERIENCES
 

• Teaching Assistant, Interdisciplinary Masters, The Graduate Institute (2021-22)
   

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARds
 

• Doc.CH - Swiss National Science Foundation (2023-26)
• Doc.mobility - Swiss National Science Foundation (2025-26)