Dr. Gagné received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Yale University and has worked at Waseda University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, and Managing Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Contemporary Japan. His research interests include theories of moral economy, social welfare, religious globalization, and the cultural industries, with a regional focus on Japan. He co-edited Japan through the lens of the Tokyo Olympics (Routledge, 2020), and his work has been published in Transcultural Psychiatry, Japan Review, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and others.