Yuko Higashi is a professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Osaka Prefecture University in Japan. Prior to her current post, she was associate professor at the Graduate School of Human Life Sciences of Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, and a visiting associate professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the The Open University of Japan in Chiba. Dr. Higashi is a head researcher for the project on transgender and gender non-conforming people in Asia. Prior to this, she led a team of researchers in their work on sex-labor and HIV/AIDS. Dr. Higashi is member of the board of directors of the Osaka Prefectural Human Rights Association and Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder, a counselor for the Japan Society of Adolescentology and the Japanese Association for Sex Education. She is a frequent presenter at various events and an author of numerous publications and is instructor at the Japan Society of Sexuality and Social Work and continuously holds sex education seminars. Dr. Higashi holds an M.S.W. from the University of Hawai’I at Manoa, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in human development sciences from the Ochanomizu University in Tokyo.