Dr. Mimi Ito

Wow! LUCI Lab friend and Informatics Department member, Mimi Ito has been appointed as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning. Here is the email that came out from the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost at UCI:

“I am delighted to announce the appointment of Mizuko “Mimi” Ito as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning, effective September 1, 2010.

A recognized expert in the field of digital media and learning, Professor Ito holds appointments in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Informatics in the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, and serves as Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub in the University of California Humanities Research Institute. She is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She recently completed a research project supported by the MacArthur Foundation, a three year ethnographic study of kid-initiated and peer-based forms of engagement with new media. In 2008, she was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association. Professor Ito holds Ph.D. degrees in Education and Anthropology from Stanford University. Her publications include “Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software”, and the co-authored book, “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media”, as well as a co-edited book, “Personal Portable Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life”.

Please join me in congratulating Professor Ito on this exciting appointment, and thanking the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its generous support of this important initiative.”

Michael R. Gottfredson
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Congratulations Mimi!