Daniela Kato

Creating conditions where careful attention becomes possible — through language, place, care, and community.

About

I am interested in how people learn to pay attention, especially when familiar ways of living, teaching, and belonging begin to change.My work explores the conditions that allow learning, writing, and community life to remain possible in such times.

How I work

Making attention possible
I design educational spaces that help people slow down, notice more carefully, and become curious about the conditions shaping their experience.Making conversation possible
Through writing, dialogue, and shared inquiry, I create opportunities to think together across differences, disciplines, cultures, and ways of knowing.Making participation possible
Learning matters when it changes how we inhabit places, communities, and relationships. My work explores educational practices that strengthen this capacity.

TEACHING & PRACTICE

After more than fifteen years teaching in universities in Japan and China — across literature and film, the environmental humanities, intercultural education, project-based learning, writing, and curriculum design — my work has gradually shifted toward relational, situated forms of education.I currently teach Sustainable Education and Academic Writing in the Master of Social Development and Administration program at Rikkyo University's Graduate School of Social Design Studies, in Tokyo, where I also offer guest lectures and workshops on place-responsive learning, autoethnography, and research-creation.In my teaching, I work with generative AI as a question of educational attention: how students and teachers can use emerging technology carefully, transparently, and without losing their capacity to think, write, and respond for themselves.Alongside university teaching, I facilitate ecotherapy-informed workshops exploring storytelling, folklore, and place-responsive practices.I hold a PhD in English Literature from the University of Porto, a CELTA qualification, and a Diploma in Environmentally Based Therapies from Tariki Trust.I have lived in Japan since 2007 and work across English and Japanese. I am especially interested in educational practices shaped by migration, internationalization, and changing social and ecological conditions.

Selected writing

Place & Ecology
Foraging Among the Ruins of Satoyama in Rural Japan. Garland Magazine, March 2023.
Slashed by the Wind. The Dark Mountain Project, October 2023.
Bathing in the Forests of Forgetting. Substack, November 2025.Education & Writing
Psychological and Therapeutic Approaches to the Fairy Tale. The Routledge Companion to Fairy Tales (Routledge, 2026).
Writing in Weather. Substack, March 2026.
Exoskeletons. Substack, March 2026.
Before Explanation Settles. Substack, April 2026.Care & Infrastructure
The Human Cage. Substack, May 2026.
What Chihiro Notices. Substack, June 2026.
Carrying Our Mothers: Obasuteyama, Care, and the Cruelties of Successful Aging. Substack, December 2025.Japan, Modernity & Atmosphere
Netarō Time. Substack, November 2025.
Grief as Architecture, Memory as Weather. Substack, January 2026.
Invisible Transmissions. Substack, May 2026.

Contact

If something here resonates with your own work, I'd be glad to hear from you. I welcome conversations about teaching, guest lectures, writing, workshops, and collaborative inquiries into education, place, and community.