Mizuko (Mimi) Ito

Visiting Researcher

Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist and learning scientist who has studied young people’s engagement with digital technology for thirty years in the United States and Japan. She is Director of the Connected Learning Lab and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine. She has two PhDs from Stanford University, in Education and Anthropology, and an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University.

Her work centers on how to tap student interests and digital media to fuel learning that is engaging, relevant, inclusive, and socially connected. Her studies include research on the emergence of children’s edutainment software, the growth of mobile media culture and otaku culture in Japan, social media and network and games in the US, and the worldwide adoption of networked Japanese children’s media such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. More recently, her work has focused on how educators, technologists, and parents can honor young people’s diverse interests and identities, tapping their interests and digital engagements to power learning, support wellbeing, and civic engagement.

For over a decade, she directed research for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative and led the development of the “connected learning” research and design framework with an international network of scholars, educators, and designers. The connected learning framework offers a youth-centered and equity-oriented approach towards understanding and supporting learning, development, and wellbeing in a digitally connected era. Ito established the Connected Learning Lab at UC Irvine, and an affiliated nonprofit, the Connected Learning Alliance, to continue research, innovation, and social impact projects in technology and learning. She is also co-founder with Katie Salen Tekinbaş, of Connected Camps, an organization that offers social, project-based online learning experience in popular platforms such as Minecraft and Roblox.