Team

Joshua Paul Dale is the author of Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World (Profile Books, 2023), and is the editor and author of numerous books and articles on cuteness. He researches both the kawaii and cute aesthetics, and is also interested in the science behind our response to cute objects. Dale is a Professor of American Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo. Visit his website at: www.cutestudies.org.

Patrick W. Galbraith is an Associate Professor in the School of International Communication at Senshū University in Tokyo. After earning a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Tokyo, he earned a second PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. His recent publications include Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan (2019), Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga (2020) and The Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood (2021).

Erica Kanesaka is a writer and researcher who specializes in the racial and sexual politics of kawaii and cute cultures. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Emory University, where she teaches courses in Asian American literature and culture that focus on feminism, childhood, and popular culture. Her cute studies research has appeared in scholarly journals including the Journal of Asian American Studies, positions: asia critique, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She also regularly writes about cuteness for public audiences in forums such as Catapult and Public Books.

Dr. Megan Catherine Rose is a cultural sociologist and artist, specializing in visual cultures and creativity for wellbeing and inclusion. She focuses on subcultural art, design, media and technology in Japan and its intersections with care, queer cultures and neurodiversity. She is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo Japan, and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney, Australia and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.

Georgia Thomas-Parr is an Associate Lecturer in film and media at University College London. Her research interests include global representations of girlhood and femme subcultures relating to Japan, in particular the emergence of maid cafes in a UK setting. She also makes audiovisual essays on the subjects of girlhood, global and Japanese cinema.