Faculty Members
Dr. KOVACIC Mateja
Assistant Professor
| PhD, Humanities and Creative Writing | |
| (852) 3411-8231 | |
| mateja@hkbu.edu.hk | |
| CVA Room 946 |
Dr. Mateja researches science, technology, and popular culture in a transcultural context with a focus on Japan. Her primary disciplines are anthropology, history, philosophy, and science and technology studies which she combines in teaching and researching epistemologies of non-human and human life.
Mateja welcomes research proposals on popular culture and transcultural studies of robots, AI, cyborgs, environment, nature, multispecies studies, indigeneity, animation, and games.
Research interests
Science
Technology
Popular culture
Japanese culture
Teaching Courses
Japanese Animation
Understanding Animation
Transcultural Studies of Animation
Transcultural Studies of Games
Publications
Books:
Idology in Transcultural Perspective: Anthropological Investigations of Popular Idolatry. Co-editor with Hiroshi Aoyagi & Patrick W. Galbraith. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-82677-2
Book chapters
“Mateja Kovacic (2023) “Opening the West with Japanese Mermaid Mummies: Ningyo in the Making of the Theory of Evolution.” Lewis Bremner, Maro Dotulong, Sho Konishi (Eds). Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World. Brill.
“Cyborg in Idology Studies: Symbiosis of Animating Humans and Machines.” Idology in Transcultural Perspective: Anthropological Investigations of Popular Idolatry. Hiroshi Aoyagi, Patrick W. Galbraith, Mateja Kovacic (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
“On Popular Idolatry: A Reflexive Symbological Spin,” with Hiroshi Aoyagi. Idology in Transcultural Perspective: Anthropological Investigations of Popular Idolatry. Hiroshi Aoyagi, Patrick W. Galbraith, Mateja Kovacic (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Journal articles
Mateja Kovacic (2024) “Hong Kong’s Anime: A Cultural History of Japanese Animation in Hong Kong’s Last Decade.” Journal of Anime and Manga Studies.
Mateja Kovacic, Simon Marvin, Aidan While (2023) “Regulating Sidewalk Delivery Robots as a Disruptive New Urban Technology.” Urban Geography.
Mateja Kovacic (2023) “Between Animated Cells and Animated Cels: Symbiotic Turn and Animation in Multispecies Life.” Science as Culture.
“Urban AI in China: Social Control or Hyper-Capitalist Development in the Post-Smart City?” with Simon Marvin, Aidan While & Bei Chen. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2022.
“Making space for drones: The contested reregulation of airspace in Tanzania and Rwanda,” with Andy Lockhart, Simon Marvin, Aidan H. While, Nancy Odendaal & Christian Alexander Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021.
“Tecno-especies: la humanidad que se hace a sí misma y los desechables,” with María G. Navarro. Bajo Palabra. Il Epoca. Revista de Filosofía 27, 2021. Link: https://revistas.uam.es/bajopalabra/article/view/bp2021_27_002
“Neo-ethnic Self-styling among Young Indigenous People of Brazil: Re-appropriating Ethnicity through Cultural Hybridity,” with Hiroshi Aoyagi & Steven Baines. Vibrant 17, 2020.
“Urban robotic experimentation: Tokyo, Dubai and California,” with Simon Marvin & Aidan H. While. Urban Studies, 2020.
“The making of national robot history in Japan: Monozukuri, enculturation and cultural lineage of robots.” Critical Asian Studies 50(3), 2018.
Awards/Grants/Honors
Project name: Transnational anarchist digital networks: Japanese animation & civic imagination in Hong Kong’s social movement
Awards name: Research Grants Council Early Career Scheme
Year: 2021-2024
Organised Recent Events
2-day Postgraduate Students’ International Workshop Transnational Fandoms and Civic Imagination with Prof Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California) and Prof Hiroshi Aoyagi (Meiji Gakuin University), May 2024
Stateless People in a Virtuous Digital Society: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong, 1-day symposium with Rev Timothy Ka Chan, Mr Aimé Girimana, Ms Jenifer Moberg Pforte, and Mr Vishal Ginni, November 2023
Migrant Women Rise documentary screening with Prof Ellen Seiter (Academy of Film, HKBU), director Francis Catedral, co-producer Deaconess Joyous, and migrant worker Annabelle Maregmen, November 2023
Participated in Recent Events:
“Hong Kong’s Anime: Transnational Pop Digital Anarchist Networks,” Invited lecture, Research Postgraduate Seminar, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, May 2024
“Opening the West with Japanese mermaid mummies: ningyo in the making of the theory of evolution,” Invited talk, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, May 2024
“US, California, City and County of San Francisco, Emerging Technologies Working Group.” Australian Urban Robotic Futures: Potentials, Limits and Options, Workshop, University of Sydney, 16 November 2023
“Isekai: Hong Kong’s Anime in 2019.” Mechademia/JAMS AX Symposium, Anime Expo, international symposium, Los Angeles, July 2023
“Missing Bodies, Missing Voices: Ordinary Lives and the Reframing of ‘Postwar Japan’.” International Conference. Panel Chair and Discussant. University of Oxford, March 2023
“Microorganisms and algorithms: Configurations of life in Ghost in the Shell.” The Science and Science Fiction of AI: Exploring the Cultural Identities and Imagined Futures of Artificial Intelligence seminar. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, 2022
“Idology in Transcultural Perspective: Anthropological Investigations of Popular Idolatry.” With Hiroshi Aoyagi & Patrick W. Galbraith. University of Manchester, UK, 2022
“Ideas, Imaginaries, Politics, Geopolitics, and Economics: A comparative cultural perspective on social robotics and AI in Japan, Dubai, and California.” ICServ International Webinar Series. Japanese service - industrial and cultural uniqueness, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan 2022
Black Transnationalism and Japan conference. Panel Chair: Afro-Japanese Cultural Encounters, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, UK, 2021
PhD Students Under Supervision:
Deng Haoxian
Researching the transnational modern soundscapes in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, tracing the history of music and musical machinery among ordinary people. He also traces the meanings that emerge and are shared through modern music technology, especially the historicity of Asian modernity.
Fatima Lock Aspiros
Researching the Korean Wave / Hallyu in Peru. She is looking at various K-pop cultures but particularly K-dramas to understand not only why K-pop is popular in Peru but how K-pop is affecting and changing the Peruvian ideas of masculinity, beauty, and life.
Shan Bowen
Researching the Nisu fans and Zhengsu fans in China, researching the new trend of social gendering of male pop idols by women fans. She is especially interested in the process of gendering and gender performativity as a new kind of relationship between fans and idols.
Zhang Zixuan
Researching the wuxia games and gaming community, particularly how the gamers are reinventing the wuxia genre in the political and legal contexts in China. He also explores wuxia as a virtual site of civic imagination through fantasy for the gamers.
Zhang Yuqi
Researching Hong Kong community cinema and its grassroots activism. She redefines cinema and community as well as independent films by looking at how, where, and why the boundaries between those who make films, those who act in films, and those who watch films are removed in a common path toward a better community and life.