Dr Anna-Viktoria Vittinghoff

School of Languages, Arts and Societies

Lecturer in East Asian Studies

Anna-Viktoria Vittinghoff 2025 Profile Photo
Profile picture of Anna-Viktoria Vittinghoff 2025 Profile Photo
a.vittinghoff@sheffield.ac.uk
Jessop West

Full contact details

Dr Anna-Viktoria Vittinghoff
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

I have been a Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield since August 2022. I am a social historian specialising in modern Japan. My work explores vital intersections between feminism, disability and reproductive justice. My current research focuses on grassroots anti-eugenics activism in Japan from the 1970s to the present day.

Qualifications

  • B.A. Japanese Studies and History of Art (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich)

  • M.Sc. East Asian Relations (University of Edinburgh)

  • PhD Japanese Studies (University of Edinburgh)

Â鶹ÊÓƵ interests

My doctoral research looked at the life and work of Yonezu Tomoko, a prominent female disabled activist in Japan whose work spanned both the radical women’s liberation (Å«man ribu) and disability movement from the 1970s to 1996. Through my investigation I show how ribu thought provided a platform for new forms of intersectional activist groups to challenge productivity as the predominant measure of human value in Japan into the 1990s. In doing so my thesis provides an analysis of post-war Japanese reproduction discourse and addresses how the presence, participation, and contributions of disabled activists pushed the debate beyond bodily autonomy based on gender and sexuality. 

My research interests include, but are not limited to:

  • The Disability movement in post-war Japan
  • The Åªman ribu movement in the 1970s
  • Reproductive justice and politics in modern Japan
  • The intersection of disability and gender within social activism
  • Eugenics and Anti-eugenics in modern Japan
  • Transnational networks of reproductive justice in East Asia
  • The Japanese student movement and the New Left
  • Social order and bio-politics in Japan
  • Global 1968
Teaching activities

I have taught across all levels of UG study including modules such as History and Culture in Japan, Gender and Identities in East Asia, East Asian Fieldwork, Â鶹ÊÓƵing East Asia and East Asian Â鶹ÊÓƵ Project.

I am also supervising dissertations on both UG and PGT level.

Publications and Awards

Publications:

  • Vittinghoff, A. (forthcoming). Tokoro Mitsuko – Her love and revolution as fuel for political activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In: Perkins and de Vargas (eds.). Political Thought and Japan’s New Left Movements – Transformations in Radical Theory. London, UK: Bloomsbury.

  • Vittinghoff, A. (2025). Disability: Feminist Challenges to Eugenics and the Emergence of Disabled Women’s Voices. In: Germer, A. and Wöhr, U. (eds.). Handbook of Feminisms in Japan. Tokyo, JPN: Japan Documents. pp. 44-52.

  • Vittinghoff, A. (2024). Feminist Student Movement in Japan 1945–1975.

  • Oxford research encyclopedia of Asian history. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  • Vittinghoff, A. (2022). Reassessing Japanese Radical Feminism from the Vantage Point of Dis/ability. In: Lee, M., Cooper, F.R. and Reeve, P. (eds.). Dis/ability in media, law: Intersectional, embodied and socially constructed? London, UK: Routledge. pp. 119-233.

Awards:

  • Recipient of the Sarah Hyde Memorial Award 2019 for PhD research project
  • Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Studentship Sept 2018 – Sept 2020
  • Japan Foundation Endowment Committee Grant for conducting field work in Japan, March 2020
  • British Association for Japanese Studies John Crump Studentship 2021
  • University of Edinburgh College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Centre for Data, Culture and Society Small PhD Fund, May 2020