I recently updated my home page. If you miss the old one, it's still available here.


I currently serve as the Chair of Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. I am on the Board for the Society for Visual Anthropology (2009-2012; 2012-2015) and I also serve on the editorial board of the Amerasia Journal.
National Service:

I received a Yale Junior Faculty Fellowship (2007-2008) to conduct research on psychiatric and physical disabilities in Japan and a Yale Senior Faculty Fellowship (2011-2012) to do work on non-mainstream sexualities in Japan. About a decade ago, I was granted an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership to pursue my research on comparative disability politics in Japan and the United States during the 2004-2005 academic year. And even further back, one of my journal articles won the 2003 ISS/Oxford University Press Prize for Modern Japanese Studies. It was later selected to be one of Oxford University Press' 100 seminal papers celebrating their centennial of academic publishing. My first monograph, Deaf in Japan, was awarded the 2008 John Whitney Hall Book Prize by the Association for Asian Studies. My second film, A Japanese Funeral, was awarded the SVA Short Film Award in 2010 and the Society for East Asian Anthropology David Plath Media Award in 2011.

Fellowships and Awards:
I was born in Indonesia and grew up in Australia, Japan, and the United States. However, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the term "Asian-American" as I'm not quite Asian and not really American, but Returnee -Japanese -Born-Indonesian - Bred-Australian- Quasi-American is a mouthful most people don't want to handle. My preferred gender pronouns in case anyone asks is she/her.
Random Trivia: