About | Onoreto

#About me (old)

I am Stevie Poppe (スティーヴィー・ポッペ), a doctoral researcher passionate about studying the interplay between technology, media, and society.

Growing up in the digital age, online communication and digital media have always been integral to my life. This sparked my initial fascination with the technical aspects of the internet and computing, leading me to pursue an undergraduate program in Computer Science, which I completed in 2014. Having reached the end of those studies, however, my interests shifted towards matters of politics and society, and I felt a urge to broaden my horizons beyond those technical skills. Admittedly under the internet-facilitated influence of Japanese popular culture, I chose to enroll in the Japanese Studies program at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), completing my graduate studies in 2019.

During my studies, I had the incredible opportunity to spend three academic semesters in Japan as a MEXT-funded research student at Chuo University (2017 - 2019, department of Socio-Informatics), which allowed me to synthesize my technical background with my academic interests in media history, politics, and cultural sociology. Entering 2020, I began my PhD studies at KU Leuven, working on the topic of grassroots civic movements and strategic online disinformation, funded through a PhD Fellowship of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). During this time, I had a half-year research stay in Germany (Nuremberg and Berlin), as well as an upcoming half-year research stay in Tokyo, Japan (2023 - 2024).

Outside of academia, my main interests lie in music and film. I spent the better part of my early life practicing piano and playing keyboard in bands, and although I have less time to devote on this now, I still enjoy spending free time on composing pieces I will probably never finish. I also continue to do a bit of web development once in a while (this blog actually started of as a creative outlet aimed to provide some assistance on the technical aspects of studying Japanese). Finally, My favorite directors are Juzo Itami, Takeshi Kitano, Hirokazu Koreeda, Bi Gan, Yi-Mou Zhang, Wong kar-wai, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, … 🙃

#About this blog

Technically, this blog (Onoreto¹) was built as a static site with a highly customized template using the lightweight, python-based Pelican framework, and is hosted on GitHub’s free web hosting service GitHub Pages. Due to its ease and sustainability, I have for the past half decade written most of my writings (including graduate and undergraduate thesis, term papers and course notes) in the markdown syntax, and continue doing so with Pelican.

Onoreto is the transliteration of 己と, stylized as 己ト. In the context of this blog as personal portfolio, 己 (onore) is a humble, rather old-fashioned way to refer to oneself, and 己と also serves as an archaic Japanese expression signifying a spontaneous, natural action, similar to みずから mizukara or おのずから onozukara. ↩
For one academic year, I have assisted Dr. Prof. Nomiya Daishiro as teaching assistant in his Global Sociology Program, a course designed to teach undergraduate students the necessary skills to tackle academic research in the English language. This is done through both extensively handling academic literature on global issues in the field of Sociology (both in English and Japanese), as well as learn methodology through group projects. The students' intensive work lead to several presentations at an international conference held in Tokyo, March, 2019. ↩
I used my period as student at Chuo University to not just further my academic ambitions, but to develop a local friend circle based on my personal hobbies. By joining a music circles, I fulfilled a personal dream of performing live music in Japan, including at Chuo University's school festival. finally, I was a member of the piano circle, and often spent time at one of the movie-circles to extend my knowledge of Japanese cinema. ↩
‘Peer Assisted Learning’. PAL coaches at Leuven University, usually second and third grade upper-class students, regularly assist first grade students on topics ranging from efficient studying, preparing for certain classes, networking or feeling at home. I took on the role of PAL coach in my second and third year. ↩
The Japan Studies CC (Curriculum Commission) monitors and assesses the quality of the academic program and consists of both faculty members and students representing their respective years. Topics include matters as programming, form and evaluation of courses amongst others. I served as CC member from my first to my third at Leuven University. ↩
KU Leuven's buddy program is meant to ease the integration of new international students or researchers by connecting them to locals. These local 'buddies' help with things like finding one's way around town, adapting to one's new lifestyle, expending one's network, etc. ↩
We follow the principle of Guided Reading: weekly reading sessions as a group of about six students accompanied by a teacher serving as our mentor. In our second year, we finished our first book: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女) over the course of one semester. ↩