Hiroko COSTANTINI

Bio :

Hiroko’s main area of research relates to care for older adults, ‘care literacy’, ‘care communication’, family relations, and care technologies, with a particular focus on men with care roles.

Her research addresses the nexus of care for older family members, gender and masculinity, and engagement in care of citizens in wider society. One research focus is on how gender permeates couples’ care practices in the family and how men’s involvement in care evolves, including in contemporary society and in a historical context, over their life course, from care for children to ageing parents. As the pressures of caring for older adults risk divergent unequal health and care outcomes for family working carers, a related research issue addressed is how deploying technologies may reduce such inequalities amongst family carers and consequently transform family relations and involvement of other social stakeholders. In a complementary research stream, placing emphasis on wider citizens’ engagement in local community, Hiroko and her colleagues have developed the novel notions of ‘care literacy’, the knowledge and capabilities that enable people in need of care to live their daily lives in the community and facilitate potential health and care solutions, and of ‘care communication’, which encompasses channels including mass media and grass root activities.

Her research focuses on men’s involvement in care for older adults in Japan and France fully funded by Horizon 2020 Marie Curie actions by the European Commission and by AXA Research Find. Hiroko’s PhD, at University of Cambridge, was on how men negotiate their sense of masculinity and family relations. She previously earned an M.A. at Harvard University, an MSc at University of Oxford. Before embarking academia, she had worked as a broadcaster for TV stations in Japan, including a major channel NHK in Tokyo.