Connected Learning Lab Symposium: Otaku Communities as Platforms for Neurodiversity Inclusive Learning – a Cross Cultural Dialogue

November 20, 2025
4pm-5pm PST

UC Irvine, Calit2 Building, 1st floor Auditorium
Followed by a reception. Also streaming on Zoom

RSVP today!

Otaku culture and communities are centered on connection and communication driven by passionate interest in Japanese popular media such as anime, manga, and games. Whether through online communities, fan conventions, gaming, cosplay, or creative production, many of these affinity groups are spaces of refuge and belonging for neurodivergent individuals. Once marginalized and stigmatized, otaku culture has become increasingly mainstream and celebrated in Japan and around the world. Unlike social contexts centered on school, workplaces, and sports, otaku culture often grows from the sensibilities and social preferences of neurodivergent individuals. A growing number of Japanese popular culture creators openly identify as autistic, reframing “restricted interests” from a medicalized pathology to a strength that drives discipline, inquiry and creativity.

This symposium highlights an emerging set of efforts to build learning environments that tap these strengths of otaku and fan culture to support neurodiversity inclusive, connected, and interest-driven learning. Henry Jenkins is a founding figure in fandom studies, as well as an influential media educator who has written extensively on how to tap popular culture to support civic engagement and learning. Researcher and editor Kohei Kato has been developing and studying tabletop roleplaying game clubs for neurodivergent youth to socialize and develop peer relationships in an inclusive, interest-driven setting. Daisuke Okabe is a learning scientist and ethnographer who specializes in the study of culturally connected learning and otaku fan culture in Japan. Together they will explore this new area of cross-cultural research, design, and innovation.

Panelist Bios

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, Education, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. With Robert Kozinets, he is currently publishing the Frames of Fandom book series, which includes Defining Fandom, Fandom as Audience, and Fandom as Consumer Collective. With Sangita Shresthova, he serves as the co-director of two research groups at USC, Civic Paths and Transcultural Fandom. He has served on the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning research network and their Youth and Participatory Politics Network. He is the author and editor of more than twenty books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Reading in a Participatory Culture, Participatory Culture in a Networked Society (with Mimi Ito and danah boyd), By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activists, Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination, and Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America. He is the senior editor of the Pop Junctions blog (formerly Confessions of an Aca-Fan) and co-host of the How Do You Like It So Far? Podcast. He founded and was the long time director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program.

Kohei Kato is an educational researcher, game designer and special education researcher who leads the Kaneko Research Institute in Tokyo. He has designed Challenge Dungeon RPG, a tabletop roleplaying game (TRPG) that provides accessible ways of getting to know fellow players, share interests, and develop a team identity. He has been organizing The Sunday Project (SunPro), a monthly TRPG club for young people on the autism spectrum and related developmental disabilities. In contrast to a more common “social skills training” approach that focuses on fixing autistic deficits and conforming to mainstream social expectations, SunPro is an inclusive platform organized around shared interests and social exchange within a common structure of play.

Daisuke Okabe is a cognitive and learning scientist and a professor in Sociology and Media Studies and Informatics at Tokyo City University. He enjoys scuba diving and barracuda tornadoes. He has been a leading researcher in the expanding situated learning approaches such as connected learning in Japan and has conducted extensive ethnographic studies on youth technology adoption and participatory fandom and otaku culture. He has also been instrumental in bringing Japanese scholarship in technology and fan studies to the US, collaborating with Mimi in translating and editing two influential essay collections, Personal Portable Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life and Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World.