PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Ekaterina Hertog

Ekaterina Hertog is an Oxford sociologist whose work asks how AI and digital technologies reshape family life, unpaid work, and care. After a year in Japan, she studied sociology at Oxford, completed an MSc and DPhil, and published the 2009 book Tough Choices about single motherhood in Japan. She leads DomesticAI research on automation at home and studies parental digital monitoring, family well-being, and social attitudes toward care robots. She is an Associate Professor of AI and Society at Oxford; in 2026, she and Victoria Nash received funding to study digital skills among care-experienced young people.

Links
Website

Timeline

  1. 2009

    Oxford sociology and Tough Choices

    After a year in Japan, she studies sociology at Oxford and completes an MSc and DPhil in Sociology. Her 2009 Stanford University Press book, Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Contemporary Japan, examines Japanese women's childbearing decisions and values.

  2. March 2020

    Funding the DomesticAI project

    In March 2020, she receives a £500,000 grant with Professor Nobuko Nagase of Ochanomizu University for DomesticAI. The UK-Japan project studies AI's potential to transform unpaid domestic work and how willing people are to use automation in private homes.

  3. March 2022

    Associate Professor in AI and Society

    In March 2022, she joins the Oxford Internet Institute and Faculty of Philosophy as Associate Professor of AI and Society, moving from Oxford's Department of Sociology. She returns to Wadham College as a Senior Research Fellow, where she held a Junior Research Fellowship earlier.

  4. 2023

    Estimating domestic automation

    In 2023, she coauthors a study estimating how smart and AI technologies could automate unpaid domestic work. It applies automation estimates to 19 household tasks using Japanese and UK time-use data.

  5. 2024

    Robots and digital parenting

    In 2024, she coauthors Silicon caregivers, a study across 28 European countries that finds men more willing than women to accept robot care at home in old age. A British Academy position paper, Data-Driven Parenting, examines parental monitoring and its effects on parent-child relationships, children's autonomy, and family well-being; she coauthors it with Netta Weinstein and Jun Zhao.

  6. 2025

    Education and gendered work

    In 2025, she publishes Education and the Gender Division of Labor in Japan, a study of trends in paid and unpaid work from 1991 to 2016.

  7. 2026

    Digital skills in care

    In February 2026, she and Victoria Nash receive funding for a project studying how care-experienced children and young people develop critical digital skills. She is Associate Professor of AI and Society at the Oxford Internet Institute, a post she takes up in March 2022.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Ekaterina Hertog - Oxford Sparks oxfordsparks.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Ekaterina Hertog | Ethics in AI oxford-aiethics.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Tough choices : bearing an illegitimate child in contemporary Japan / Ekaterina Hertog. | NDL Search ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. International collaboration will reveal AI's potential to transform unpaid domestic work | Department of Sociology sociology.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Associate Professor of AI & Society appointed oii.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. The future of unpaid work: Estimating the effects of automation on time spent on housework and care work in Japan and the UK research.aalto.fi. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Would you be willing to have robots look after you in your old age? A new study by Ekaterina Hertog finds that men and women think differently about this. wadham.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. OII | Dr Ekaterina Hertog oii.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. Dr Ekaterina Hertog awarded funding for new research on the digital lives of care-experienced children oxford-aiethics.ox.ac.uk. Checked 19 October 2026.