Inouchi Ayumi
井濃内歩

Ayumi Inouchi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Tsukuba, Japan. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from International Christian University and M.A. in Applied Linguistics in Japanese from the University of Tsukuba. Her research interests include youth language and culture, public, mobility, speech play, aesthetics of language, identity, gender, and language education. In her dissertation, she explores the transformation of youth sociality in contemporary Japan emerging through daily discursive practices. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a private high school that has been actively accepting returnee Japanese and international students from Asian countries, she studies how youth from diverse linguistic backgrounds navigate the public space of school, primarily focusing on the playful usage of Korean language among them. Besides the dissertation project, she is also continuously engaging in practice-oriented research projects to improve communication issues faced by newcomer foreign residents and old residents in the regional communities of Japan.