Kimberly Hassel

Kimberly Hassel specializes in cultural anthropology, with a focus on modern Japanese society. Her research interests include youth culture, digital culture, digital ethnography, identity formation, gender, and race/ethnicity. Kimberly’s dissertation focuses on the relationship between Social Networking Sites (SNS), smartphone ownership, and the (re)figuring of sociality and selfhood among Japanese youths. Her dissertation fieldwork is currently sponsored by a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship.

Along with youth culture, Kimberly’s ethnographic projects have centered on diaspora studies and critical mixed race studies. Her most recent ethnographic project examined the ways in which Yokohama’s museums and urban landscape narrate Japanese identity as transnational. Her ongoing research project examines media portrayals of mixed-race identity in Japan vis-à-vis lived experience.