Living on the Edge 2025

Session

S403

4 Oct 2025, 10:45

Kyoto Sangyo University

70. Between Worlds: Navigating My Legitimacy and Identity in Japan

Adrianne Verla Uchida (Tokyo City University)

04/10/2025, 10:45

Interactive Presentation

Each of us inhabits multiple, intersecting identities that shape our lived experiences. As a white woman living in Japan, I navigate life as both a global majority and a local minority. I am a fluent Japanese speaker, a mother to two bilingual, bicultural children, a PhD student in my 40s, an EFL educator, and a researcher focusing on the educational experiences of immigrant children and the...

63. Shifting Roles, Persistent Gaps: Non-Japanese Female Faculty Navigating Identity, Leadership, and Well-being in Japan

Olivia Kennedy, Sandra Healy (Kyoto Institute of Technology)

04/10/2025, 11:30

Interactive Presentation

This narrative case study explores how non-Japanese late-career female faculty members navigate complex, intersecting identities within higher education in Japan. As visible minorities, they strive to fulfil their many roles, both professional and personal, as educators, mentors, employees, partners, parents, and carers of elderly parents, while negotiating institutional cultures that often...

67. “You are autistic, so you can’t become a university professor”: A Neurodivergent scholar’s struggles in Japanese academia

Yasushi Miyazaki

04/10/2025, 13:30

Interactive Presentation

As a neurodivergent scholar in sociolinguistics and disability studies with no full-time employment, I would like to present my career history from my undergraduate studentship to my current post-doc position. Then, I would like to discuss how academia should be inclusive for neurodivergent scholars. Looking back on my personal story, I have been discriminated against by many university...

77. Sketching Stability: Using Gratidoodles to Navigate Changing Identities

Jennifer Jordan (Kwansei Gakuin University), Yoshi Joanna Grote (Kyoto Sangyo University)

04/10/2025, 14:10

Shifting identities can be empowering and deeply rewarding, but it can also be exhausting at times. We may struggle to convince others of the legitimacy of one identity or wrestle with impostor syndrome – unsure if we truly belong in a space. At times, we may be transitioning away from long-held beliefs about who we are or shifting between roles. At other times, we may struggle to shake off...

61. Silent Struggles: Recognizing Hidden Needs in Sensitive and Autistic Students

Ben McDonough

04/10/2025, 15:45

Round Table

This roundtable will explore the often invisible challenges faced by autistic and highly sensitive (personality; HSP) students in Japanese schools. Many of these students mask their difficulties to fit in, leading to under-recognition and lack of support. Rationale: Japanese educational culture emphasizes conformity and academic performance, which can exacerbate the struggles of neurodivergent...

56. Coming out of the fog at 40: My adoption story

Robert Dykes

04/10/2025, 17:00

Interactive Presentation

"Coming out of the fog" is when an adoptee realizes and acknowledges the emotional and psychological impact of their adoption, which is caused by the separation from their birth mother. For some adoptees, they live their entire lives never emerging from the fog. Others gradually come out, like my sister. Then there are those like me who come out of the fog in an instant.

There I was, at 40,...

76. Navigating shifts in identities while living in Japan

Prof. Amanda Gillis-Furutaka (Kyoto Sangyo University)

05/10/2025, 09:30

We are members of Counterpoint, a multicultural support group for foreign residents in Japan. Our mission is to help members deal with changes they encounter as years pass and to enable them to find joy and fulfilment in the later stages of life.

Fiona Creaser will begin by introducing the "Health" chapter of a diversity focused workbook designed for adult learners. She will then shift to...

75. Reinventing Ourselves and Navigating Personal Identity While Living Abroad

Parvathy Ramachandran (Kanazawa Institute of Technology)

05/10/2025, 11:15

Interactive Presentation

Moving to a new country and living abroad for a considerable amount of time transforms you, whether you consciously realize it or not. Living in a culture that is radically different from ours can be challenging due to differences in customs, traditions and values. Our sense of identity evolves, and this can lead to a feeling of identity confusion and loss. Growing up in Chennai, one of the...

68. Perspectives on Shared Experiences of Diaspora from a Jewish American in Okinawan Studies

Travis Seifman

05/10/2025, 14:00

Interactive Presentation

The Sekai Uchinanchu Taikai takes place every five years, bringing together thousands of people of Okinawan descent (Uchinaanchu) from all over the world for a week of events in Okinawa. In this session, I will explore how participation in this event and others with members of Okinawan communities both in Okinawa and in diaspora, helped me to realize the extensive shared commonalities and...

65. Examining Shifting Identities through Intersectionality

Lisa Rogers (Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts)

05/10/2025, 14:45

Workshop

Recently, the theory of intersectionality from Feminist Studies has gained recognition as a valuable tool to explain how individuals encounter prejudice or discrimination not solely based on a single aspect of their identity, but rather due to the collective aspect of their identity, especially a combination of a gender identity element and other minority elements. Members of minority groups...