DEAN CONRAD is a writer, producer and educator. He spent 14 years at Hull University in the UK, teaching creative writing for the stage, radio and screen. His most recent book, Space Sirens, Scientists and Princesses, charts 120 years of female role development in science fiction cinema – the subject of his 1998 PhD thesis. Dean is currently working with production partners to develop fact and fiction projects for screens in the UK, America, Canada and Japan.
SAYURI HIRANO is a Japanese Language teacher. She spent three years at Hull University in the UK, teaching Japanese Language while she took her MA in TESOL. She also has experience teaching Japanese at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (EJUST) in Egypt and at Tokyo International University, as well as teaching English for children in Japan.
ROBERT ONO is an associate professor at Hosei University, Tokyo. After receiving his PhD from the International Christian University in 2014, with a dissertation on the tenth-century Japanese poet Ki no Tsurayuki, he has continued to explore various works of literature and cultures of Japan – especially from a comparative and theoretical perspective. Besides his contributions to Recent Scholarship on Japan (2020) and The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2018), his publications include: a monograph, Ki no Tsurayuki (2019) and an edited volume, Butoh Nyūmon (2021). Robert is also an experienced translator of both academic volumes and works of fiction.
MASAHO KUMAZAWA is a PhD student at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, where she is researching Kawabata Yasunari from the perspectives of cross-cultural representation, including: modern dance, theater, painting, poetry, and film. Her publications to date include the essays, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Of Birds and Beasts: Modern Dance and the Physical Body” in Studies in Japanese Language and Literary Art (February 2022) and “Japanized Modern Dance ‘Bikkono Odori’ (Crippled Dance) in Kawabata Yasunari’s Waltz of Flowers” in Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies (December 2022).
YUJI KATO is a professor of Anglo-American literature, critical theory, and comparative culture at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He received his degrees from The University of Tokyo, and has studied at SUNY Buffalo, UC Irvine, and Harvard University. His topics range from Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson to Haruki Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro, as well as jazz, and contemporary music. His publications in English include essays on Herman Melville, published in Italy and Poland, and an essay on Haruki Murakami published in Holland. He co-edited a collection of essays on Haruki Murakami, published in Japan and Korea.
LETIZIA GUARINI is an Associate Professor at the Department of Intercultural Communication at Hosei University, Japan. She received her PhD at Ochanomizu University. Her research examines contemporary Japanese culture and literature from a gender perspective. She has a strong interest in the emergence of new father figures in Japanese society, the father-daughter relationship in contemporary literature, and the representation of childbirth and childcare in works by contemporary women authors. She has recently published “Shōjo Sexuality in Post-War Japan: Parody and Subversion in Kurahashi Yumiko’s Divine Maiden” in Japanese Studies (2022).
HELEN S.E. PARKER is Lecturer in Japanese at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches a variety of courses on Japanese theater and literature. Her research interests lie in traditional performing arts, particularly the recent history and contemporary culture of kabuki. Her present research centers on the 2013 Ginza Kabuki-za as a performance venue and as a creative space associated with a shared past and future.
ZUZANNA BARANIAK-HIRATA received her PhD in Anthropology and Gender Studies from Ochanomizu University, Japan. She currently works as a Research Fellow in the Department of Core Research at Ochanomizu, as well as an Adjunct Lecturer at Saitama University and the University of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo. Her research and teaching interests include Japanese popular culture and live entertainment industry, gender and sexuality in the media, and fan community formation processes. She has recently published "Fantasy strolling beyond the stage: A study of fan-culture geography of the Takarazuka Revue” in Contemporary Japan (2024).
MICHAEL FURMANOVSKY is a professor of cultural studies at Ryukoku University in Kyoto and a long-term resident of Japan. His research focuses on the intersection of popular music, fashion, film and dance in both the pre- and post-war Showa era. His most recent publication examines the careers of post-war female jazz vocalists as part of a larger study of the impact of the U.S. occupation on Japan’s entertainment industry. Past research has looked at the role of American country, folk, rockabilly and idol pop in shaping Japan's music-based pop culture. His latest research focuses on female actresses who best embodied pre-war modernity.
NAOKI KAMBE teaches at Hirosaki Gakuin University, Aomori Prefecture. After receiving his PhD in communication studies from Wayne State University (MI, USA), he returned to Japan and taught various courses in gender studies and communication studies at several universities, including Rikkyo University, where he was a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at the College of Intercultural Communication. His current research interests include ecological masculinities, feminist pedagogy, and queer theory and the media. His recent scholarship can be found in Men, Masculinities, and the Earth: Contending with the (m)Anthropocene (2021), Networking Argument (2020), and RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society (2017).
CRINGUTA IRINA PELEA is a lecturer in Communication Studies at Titu Maiorescu University, Romania, where she has been a faculty member since 2018. Her primary research field is Communication and Public Relations; her secondary research fields are Intercultural Communication and Cultural Anthropology. She is the editor of the Routledge volume, Culture-Bound Syndromes in Popular Culture and has forthcoming chapters in the volumes, Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice and Routledge Handbook of Language Learning in the New Global Context.
WILLIAM SCHRAGE recently graduated with an MA from the International Relations & International Organizations, East Asia track at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. Before this, he completed a BA in History. His research focus is on East Asian popular culture, heritage preservation and international relations. His first publication, “Hiding Hobbies and Saving Social Lives: About the Representation of Otaku Struggles in Ore no Imōto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai” was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2022.
NINA ŽDANOVIČ is a graduate of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Her research focuses on multiple aspects of identities, such as: occupation, migration, gender, and ethnicity. As a practicing artist and a migrant herself, she is particularly interested in the experiences of artist and migrant populations.
FEDERICA CAVAZZUTI has been working with international art institutions to organize multidisciplinary projects in private and public exhibition spaces for more than 10 years. She is currently completing her PhD in Archaeological, Historical and Historical-Artistic Sciences at the University of Turin, Italy. Her main areas of interest are: contemporary visual arts, curatorial activism, women’s art and feminist studies. For her research she focuses in particular on the developments of female photography in Japan across the 20th and 21st centuries.