Alumni

Established in 2008, the English-language ITASIA Program in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies has graduated over 200 M.A.S. students and 18 Ph.D. students, many of whom have found top positions in industry and academia.

We encourage our alumni to maintain connections to each other and the University of Tokyo. Every year in October the ITASIA Program hosts a Homecoming Day event to welcome former students back to campus. If you are a graduate of the ITASIA Program, please subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of upcoming events.

“My two years in the ITASIA Program at the University of Tokyo was a fantastic experience. The exposure to multi-disciplinary courses not only gave me inspiring ideas but also expanded my horizon. Furthermore, the systematic training I received in the ITASIA Program has equipped me with strong research skills in my work as well.”

Xuelu Chen (M.A.S. 2013)

M.A.S. students in the ITASIA Program have found jobs with the following companies:

  • Accenture
  • Berlitz
  • Bytedance
  • CMIC Group
  • Datian Fada Law Firm
  • Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC
  • Freewill
  • Frontier Management Inc.
  • IBM Japan
  • JSR
  • JTB
  • KPMG FAS
  • Loftwork
  • Mainichi Daily News
  • Mars & Co Consulting Japan
  • Ministry of Defense Singapore
  • Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia
  • NS Solutions
  • Overseas Chinese Banking Corp.
  • Philip Morris Japan
  • Pricewater House Coopers
  • Procter & Gamble
  • Rakuten
  • S&I
  • Section L
  • Septeni Holdings
  • Sony
  • TABI LABO
  • Tata Consultancy Services Japan
  • Tencent Games
  • Tricycle
  • Yonex
  • Xiaomi Corporation
  • Zenken

M.A.S. students in the ITASIA Program have been admitted to Ph.D. programs at these institutions:

  • Brown University
  • Harvard University
  • Princeton University
  • Smith College
  • Stony Brook University
  • Waseda University

“My time in the ITASIA Program at the University of Tokyo really shaped me as a scholar and individual. From interactions with faculty and peers to interactions with informants in the field, learning with and from others was a defining chapter in my life.”

Patrick W. Galbraith (Ph.D. 2012)

Ph.D. Students in the ITASIA Program have completed dissertations on the following topics:

  • “Emergent Languages: Game Design for Communication with Artificial Agents” (2025).
  • “Wrath of Silence: Reimagining Feminist Strategies, Coalitions, and Intersubjectivity in Japan” (2025).
  • “Reassembling Class in Digital China: Inequality, Technology, and Agency from Below” (2024).
  • “From Connected to Networked Migrants: Mediated Experiences, User-Generated Content, and Virtual Networks of Filipino Temporary Migrant Worker-Vloggers in Japan” (2024)
  • “‘Rumor-ization’ of Journalistic Reporting: An Explanation of the Low Trust in Mainstream Media in Contemporary Taiwan” (2023)
  • “The Emergence of a Parallel Society: Measuring the Lack of Social Integration among Chinese Migrants in the Russian Far East” (2021)
  • “User-generated Comments Following COVID-19 Debunking News on Chinese Social Media: Content, Drivers, and Effects” (2021)
  • “Encountering Freedom of Travel: A Social History of Global Imagination and Governmentality in South Korea in the (post-) Cold War Conjuncture of the 1980s” (2021)
  • “Japan’s Efforts of Identity Construction in Manchuria, 1905-1942” (2021)
  • “Locating and Localizing the Art Networks: A Sociological Examination of the Roles of Place in Art Networks in Ueno, Tokyo in the Meiji Period” (2021)
  • “International Relations and National Innovation: Security Threats, Strategic Alliances, and Technological Growth” (2020)
  • “The Social Consequences of Alphabet Reform: Post-coloniality and the Language Policies in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan” (2019)
  • “Disassembling the Empire, Assembling the Nation-State: Imagining Locality, Nation, and State Among Chinese Students in Japan, 1896-1911” (2018)
  • “Proceeding in Hardship: The Process of Institution Building and the Evolution of China-Japan-South Korea Trilateralism” (2018)
  • “Military Threat Perception in Postwar Japan: The Soviet Union, China, and North Korea” (2017)
  • “A Multi-sited Visual Ethnographic Study on the Nepali Migration from Malma to Japan: Network Migration, Transnational Ties, and Social Transformation” (2017)
  • “Scandal, Ritual, and Media in Postwar Japan” (2017)
  • “Producing the Nation: Memory, Race, and Gender in Chinese and Japanese War Films” (2015)
  • “Information Technology, Organization, and the Japanese Economy” (2014)
  • “Becoming-Otaku: Men, Girls and Movement in Akihabara” (2012)

Ph.D. Students in the ITASIA Program have found faculty or postdoctoral positions at these institutions:

  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • King’s College London
  • Metropolitan University Prague
  • Senshu University
  • Shanghai Normal University
  • Sophia University
  • Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
  • Pusan National University
  • The University of Tokyo

Books based on doctoral dissertation research published by graduates of the ITASIA Program: