Team

Andrew Campana is an assistant professor of Japanese literature and media at Cornell University, whose work explores the intersection of poetry, media technology, and disability. His first book, Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at Media’s Edge, is forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2024, and includes chapters on poetry and disability rights activism as well as Japanese Sign Language poetry online.

​Frank Mondelli is Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Delaware. His research and teaching interests focus on the material and cultural history of technology, media, and disability in modern Japan, including the history and ​politics of assistive technologies, videogames, and traditional craftwork. His current book manuscript explores the historical intersection of D/deafness, music, and technological and media spectacle in 20th century and contemporary Japan. His academic research is deeply influenced by his work in disability and Deaf rights advocacy in both the United States and Japan. He has taught courses in Japanese videogames, literature, and culture, as well as in Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Anne-Lise Mithout is an associate professor of Japanese studies at Université Paris Cité. Her research investigates the social treatment of people with disabilities in contemporary Japan. Her PhD dissertation (Université Paris Dauphine) was focused on special education for children with visual disabilities. She has also conducted research on the Japanese disability right movement and the employment system for people with disabilities. Her first book, "Le cœur et le droit - le handicap dans la société japonaise (The heart and the law - disability in Japanese society)" will be published in 2024 (Editions Hermann, Paris).

Nagase Osamu is a disability studies scholar and a disability rights activist, focusing on the CRPD at the national level in Japan and at the regional level in East Asia from disability studies perspective.  Nagase is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ars Vivendi of the Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto and is an inaugural chair of the international committee of the Japan Society for Disability Studies.  He also serves as the Secretary-General of Inclusion International, a global network for the rights of persons with intellectual disabilities and their family members.

Wei Yu Wayne Tan is an Associate Professor of History at Hope College (Michigan, USA). He is a historian of Japan with research interests in disability studies/history, and the history of science and medicine. His first book, Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity (University of Michigan Press, 2022), explores the social, medical, and cultural contexts of blindness in early modern Japanese society (1600-1868). He is working on a new project on the role of science in creating categories of disability in modern Japan. (photo courtesy of Hope College)