SUGAWA Akiko

SUGAWA completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the Graduate School of the University of Warwick in the UK. Her focus of study was animation, 2.5D theater and other elements of popular culture theory, as well as audience and fan research. She is the vice chair of the Japan Society for Animation Studies. Her research focuses on audiences and representations of young girls in television animation in terms of gender. Recently, she has been engaged in researching female fans in 2.5D culture. Author of Shojo to maho: Ga-ru hi-ro ha ikani juyo sareta no ka (Girls and Magic: How have girl heroes been accepted?) (NTT Publishing, 2013), she received the 2014 Japan Society for Animation Studies Award. Co-author of works such as Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), Teaching Japanese Popular Culture (AAS, 2016), Shōjo Across Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and Women's Manga in Asia and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Co-editor of works such as Anime kenkyu nyumon: Oyohen (Introduction to Animation Studies: Practical Version) (Gendai Shokan, 2018) and Anime-shon bunka 55 no ki-wa-do (55 Keywords of Animation Culture) (Minerva Shobo, 2019).