Ito Appointed to MacArthur Chair
September 28, 2010 / By Anna Lynn Spitzer
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Calit2 academic affiliate Mizuko "Mimi" Ito recently was appointed the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at UC Irvine.
A recognized expert in the field of digital media and learning, Ito holds appointments in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Informatics in the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, and serves as research director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub in the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
She is a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use, particularly among young people in Japan and the U.S. She also researches technology use, focusing on children and youth's changing relationships to media and communications. She recently completed a research project supported by the MacArthur Foundation, a three-year ethnographic study of kid-initiated and peer-based forms of engagement with new media.
In 2008, she was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association.
Ito holds doctorate degrees in education and anthropology from Stanford University. Her publications include "Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software," and the co-authored book, "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media," as well as a co-edited book, "Personal Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life."
Her book on anime fandom, “Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World,” is due out from Yale University Press next year.