I am a medical and psychological anthropologist of Japan. My academic vision is to contribute to cross-cultural understandings of health, illness and well-being by bringing Western and Asian perspectives on the mind-body, religion, medicine, and therapy into fruitful dialogue. Since 2022, I have co-directed the Social Empathy Lab with my husband Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, an interdisciplinary collaborative research space.
My publications include two monographs, The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan (University of California Press, 2021), which was awarded for the Victor Turner Prize (2022), the Francis L.K. Hsu Prize (2022), and the Stirling Award (2023), and Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan (Routledge, 2006), as well as a co-edited special issue “Toward an Anthropology of Loneliness” in Transcultural Psychiatry (57:5, 2020, co-edited with Michelle Parsons), and over twenty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on psychotherapeutic practice, suicide, the mind-body relationship and Tibetan medicine. I am a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) grant recipient and a Mind and Life Contemplative Studies Fellowship (The John Templeton Foundation) recipient.
For the past ten years my research has focused on loneliness, empathy, meaning-making, subjectivity and resilience, particularly among populations at risk for suicide, in situations of domestic violence, and in prison, in both Japan and the US. My new research project is on the globalization of anime and manga, in which I explore issues of belonging, intimacy, loneliness, and nakama (friends / companions / comrades) in these media and in the fandom, as well as the cross-cultural appeal of Japanese anime and manga internationally.
I am an Associate Teaching Professor at Emory University in the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics. Over the past twenty years, I’ve focused on research and programming in the field of contemplative science, contemplative education, and our understanding of prosocial emotions like compassion and empathy. This work has taken me to k-12 schools, universities, prisons, foster care, peacebuilding centers, and other sectors of society, both within the US and internationally. I helped to develop several programs related to this work, including SEE Learning, Emory’s free k-12 social emotional learning and contemplative education program, the “Educating the Heart” program in Ireland, and others.
I’ve also focused on reforming our criminal justice system through education, and served as founding director for the Chillon Project, Life University’s higher education program for incarcerated women in the state of Georgia, and a founding board member for the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, a national non-profit. I serve on the Wellness Advisory Committee of One Voice United and as a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. I am also a Global Professor at Keio University in Japan, and a faculty member for Keio’s Center for Contemplative Studies. At Emory, I serve as an advisory board member for the Center for Mind, Brain and Culture, and a senior faculty fellow at the Center for Ethics.
