Presenter: Prof. Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Professor, Faculty of Urban Innovation, Division of Urban Innovation, Yokohama National University

Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, PhD, is a professor in the Graduate School of Urban Innovation at Yokohama National University, Japan. Dr. Sugawa-Shimada is the author of a number of books and articles on anime, manga, and Cultural Studies, including Girls and Magic: How Have Girl Heroes Been Accepted? (2013, Won the 2014 Japan Society of Animation Studies Award, in Japanese), 2.5-dimentional Culture: Stages, Characters, Fandom (2021, in Japanese), chapters in the books Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives (2013), Teaching Japanese Popular Culture (2016), Shojo Across Media (2019), Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond (2019), Contents Tourism and Pop Culture Fandom (2020), and Animating the Spiritual (2020), Idology in Transcultural Perspective (2021), War as Entertainment and Contents Tourism in Japan (2022) and as co-author, Contents Tourism in Japan (2017). Her recent work is Cultural Approaches to Studio Ghibli’s Animation (2022 in Japanese). Her website is: akikosugawa.2-d.jp

Moderator: Dr. Amy Kaler