Japanese Studies

Teaching and research staff within Japanese Studies.


Dr Erica Baffelli
Professor in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: Japanese religions; new religious movements; religion and media; religion and violence; contemporary Japan.


Mr Jonathan Bunt
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: Japanese languages and linguistics.


Dr Peter Cave 
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: School education in contemporary Japan; mathematics education for young children in Japan; history of childhood, education and youth in Japan.


Dr Tim Graf 
Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: Japanese Temple Buddhism; contemporary Japanese religions; religion and disasters; ethnographic filmmaking.


Dr Aya Homei 
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: History of demographic science in Japan; discourse of family planning and development aids in 1960s Asia; History of geriatrics and gerontology in modern Japan.


Ms Chiharu Ivison
Language Tutor (Japanese)


Dr Sharon Kinsella
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: Cultural language and political symbolism of both mass media and cultural production and subcultural forms and reactions in Japan since the early 1990s; the rise of female cross dress amongst younger men in the 2010s; cuteness and infantilism as rebellion; the educational and class factors behind the institutional and commercial transformation of manga for adults in the 1990s; otaku subculture and Lolita complex subcultures.


Dr Bill Mihalopoulos
Lecturer in Japanese Studies

Specialisms: modern Japanese history.


Dr Mamiko Noda
Language Tutor (Japanese)

Specialisms: Language education policies in Japan; critical discourse analysis; bi- and multilingual turn of applied linguistics; use of translation in language teaching.


Ms Ai Suzuki
Language Tutor (Japanese)


Ms Nozomi Yamaguchi
Senior Language Tutor (Japanese)

Specialisms: Intercultural communications; politeness/impoliteness theory; business communication.


Honorary and Emeritus staff


Professor Ian Reader
Emeritus Professor of Japanese Studies