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Doctor

Emerald L King

(she/zir)

Lecturer in Humanities

Global Cultures and Languages

Orcid identifier0000-0001-5725-1140
  • Lecturer in Humanities
    Global Cultures and Languages
  • School of Humanities, Global Cultures and Languages, 467 Humanities Building, Sandy Bay Campus, TAS

BIO

Interested in most things dark and twisty, Emerald L King is a lecturer in humanities and an award-winning cosplayer.
Her research is divided between Japanese women's writing, cosplay as fan translation, and shōjo (girls’) manga and culture.

Biography
Emerald L King studied in Australia and Japan before receiving her PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Tasmania in 2012. In 2009/2010 Emerald completed a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship to conduct research at Ochanomizu University (Tokyo, Japan) for 11 months under Dr Satako Kan and Dr Kazuko Takemura.

Before returning to UTAS as a member of staff in 2021, she worked at Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) from 2013-2018 and was appointed head of Japanese in 2016. In 2017 she was a visiting researcher at UTAS before taking up a position at La Trobe University in Australia in 2018.

Emerald’s research is based in Japanese literature but includes gothic literature, popular culture, and costume.

As part of her cosplay research, Emerald has competed in and won a number of prizes, most notably winning the 2016 finals of the Madman National Cosplay Championship (MNCC) and placing second in 2018; and placing in the finals of Australian World Cosplay Summit (WCS) preliminaries in 2018 and 2019. Emerald has worked as a volunteer translator and interpreter for the WCS finals in Japan from 2017 and in 2020 she was named a WCS Support Ambassador.

As part of her cosplay research, Emerald and her cosplay partner represented Australia at the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya in August 2024.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Lecturer in Japanese
    La Trobe University, Languages and Linguistics, Melbourne, Australia1 Feb 2018 - 30 Jun 2021
  • Visting Scholar
    University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia1 Sep 2017 - 22 Dec 2017
  • Programme Director - Japanese
    Victoria University of Wellington, School of Languages and Cultures, Wellington, New Zealand15 Feb 2016 - 31 Jan 2018
  • Lecturer in Japanese
    Victoria University of Wellington, School of Languages and Cultures, Wellington, New Zealand15 Jul 2013 - 31 Jan 2018

DEGREES

  • PhD - Japanese Literature
    University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia17 Dec 2012
  • Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Grant
    Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan1 Sep 2010
  • Bacherlor of Arts with Honours (English Literature and Japanese)
    University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia16 Dec 2005

LANGUAGES

  • English
    Can read, write, speak, understand and peer review
  • Japanese
    Can read, write, speak and understand

SCHOOL AND PORTFOLIO

  • School of Humanities

UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

  • 5 Gender Equality

AVAILABILITY

  • Media enquiries
  • Collaborative projects
  • Masters by research or PhD student supervision
  • Panellist or speaker

FIELD OF RESEARCH