Mayu Watanabe is a specially appointed associate professor at the faculty of law at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, where she teaches alternative dispute resolution (ADR), dispute system design, and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). She also taught negotiation at Hitotsubashi University and Tokyo Institute of Technology as an adjunct lecturer.

 Mayu holds a doctorate in business law from Hitotsubashi Univerisity. While she worked as a research associate at Hitotsubashi, she planned and organized the first international symposium about ODR in Japan on Sept. 2018, and invited Janet Martinez and Colin Rule.

Mayu is a founding board member of the Japan Association for Online Dispute Resolution (JODR). She was a first guest speaker at the ODR committee set up by the Japanese government (Sept. 2019-) and also was invited to speak at Family Court of Tokyo, Japan Federation of Bar Associations, regional bar associations, and other organizations.

Mayu was a visiting fellow in the Gould Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Center at Stanford Law School (2014-2016), and International Fellow at Weinstein JAMS International Fellowship program (2015).  Also, she is a senior fellow at Weinstein International Foundation (2017-).