I’m Rob Fahey. I’m an Assistant Professor at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS) at Waseda University in Tokyo, where I work on contemporary politics and political communication, and a Visiting Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, where I teach courses on data management and analysis. I was formerly a Research Associate at the Waseda Institute for Political Economy (WINPEC) from April 2019 to March 2022.

My research focuses on populism and polarisation, and the influence of conspiracy theories on political behaviour, with a particular focus on the role of social networks. I also have academic interests in machine learning and natural language processing, and their application to political science research, and in the politics of gender and sexuality.

I received my Masters and PhD in Political Science from Waseda University – my PhD thesis was a study of party control and polarisation in Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party during the 2012-2020 Abe Administration – and did my undergraduate degree (BA Japanese) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

I’m a co-founder and director of Tokyo Review, a non-profit publishing platform for young researchers and writers working on topics related to Japan’s politics, economy, society or business. You can find all the pieces I’ve personally written for the site on this page.