Dr Jason Danely
Associate Professor of Anthropology
School of Law and Social Sciences
Role
Dr. Jason Danely is Associate Professor in Anthropology and has research expertise on ageing and care in Japan, where he has at various times taught, studied, performed theatre, travelled, meditated and raised children, over the last twenty years. He regularly presents his research at invited Keynote sessions in international conferences and symposia, including in Japan, Europe and the US.
In 2015, Jason was one of 20 early-career scholars from around the world to be awarded a John Templeton Foundation Enhancing Life Project Award. Jason's project examined compassion and vulnerability in the context of unpaid care in two aging societies (Japan and England). His book, Fragile Resonance: Caring for Older Family Members in Japan and England (Cornell UP, 2022) is based on this research. Jason's related publications explore different dimensions of caring and their cultural nuances, including vulnerability, fatigue, endurence, loneliness, and gratitude.
His current research focuses on the lives of formerly incarcerated older adults in Japan and England. This research included 5 months of fieldwork in Tokyo, working alongside non-profit organizations and volunteers as they struggled to resettle older people recently released from custody. This was the subject of Jason's third monograph, Unsettled Futures: Carceral Circuits and Old Age in Japan (Vanderbilt UP, 2024) and the open access contribution to the JRAI Special Issue on 'Ageing Time Beings' (2025). Jason continues to work with justice-impacted individuals in the UK and Japan, exploring the relationship between imagination, liberation and distraction, from art to food to stand-up comedy.
Teaching and supervision
Courses
Modules taught
Undergraduate
- ANTH5003 Ritual and Society
- ANTH5015 Health, Culture and Ecology
- ANTH6034 Anthropology of Criminalisation
Supervision
Currently accepting Masters by Research or MPhil/PhD research students
Research Students
| Name | Thesis title | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Brittany Rapone | Cultural Influences Behind Exotic Pet Cafés in Japan and their Relation to the International Pet Trade | Active |
| Alexandra Chesters | The Joy of Possessions and Decluttering in Japan and the West | 2021 |
Research
Jason Danely’s work invites us to sit with the quiet, often overlooked moments that shape the lives of older adults and caregivers. Through attentive ethnographic research in Japan and the UK, he explores how ageing is lived—not as decline, but as a human condition, a site of meaning, and place of connection and care. Jason research traces the moral contours of everyday life—grief, frailty, gratitude, endurance— reorienting the anthropology of ageing toward questions of justice, chronicity and recognition. His current research expands anthropology’s lens on ageing by showing how punishment and care intersect, urging us to reconsider personhood in later life as always morally, materially, and spatially unsettled. Jason shows how unsettled stories help us to reimagine systems of care that do not rely on punishment, and systems of justice that do not ignore the ethical imperative to care. In doing so, he helps us formulate more compassionate ways of growing old together.
Centres and institutes
Groups
Projects
- Comparison of older ex-offender resettlement and community-based organisations for reducing recidivi
Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution
- Sasakawa Studentship 2023 (01/09/2023 - 31/08/2024), funded by: Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, funding amount received by Brookes: £10,000