Ayako Hatano

Ayako Hatano is an international law scholar specialising in International Human Rights Law and Law and Society. She is reading for a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar and also serves as a research fellow at the Centre of Human Rights Education and Training in Japan. She actively participates in the research community at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, as a former Graduate Research Resident and a Research Assistant. She also leads the Public International Law Discussion Group and Business and Human Rights Network at Oxford.

Her expertise extends to various aspects of human rights, including hate speech, freedom of expression, business and human rights, and gender equality and diversity. She is particularly passionate about examining how international law and norms are internalised and implemented in local contexts. She has a decade of experience of international legal research and practice with international organisations, governments, and civil society. She holds degrees from the University of Tokyo (B.A., M.A., J.D) and New York University School of Law (LL.M., Fulbright scholar).

Her recent work includes:

Ayako Hatano, Hiromichi Matsuda and Yota Negishi, ‘The impact of the United Nations human rights treaties on the domestic level in Japan’ in Christof Heyns, Frans Jacobus Viljoen, and Rachel Murray (eds), The Impact of the United Nations Human Rights Treaties on the Domestic Level: Twenty Years On (Brill 2024)

Ayako Hatano, ‘Regulating Online Hate Speech through the Prism of Human Rights Law: The Potential of Localised Content Moderation’ (2023) 41 Australian Year Book of International Law 127. 

Ayako Hatano, 'Hate Speech and International Law'  in Higaki, S., & Nasu, Y. (eds.) Hate Speech in Japan: The Possibility of a Non-Regulatory Approach (Cambridge University Press 2021)