As an Englishman living and working in Japan for over a decade now, with a Japanese wife and two young children growing up with bicultural identities, I have firsthand experience of the politics of cultural representation and a strong personal stake in contesting monolithic models of cultural belonging. My main research field is postcolonial literature, which lends itself well to the exploration of such concerns; my current focus is on cosmopolitan themes in recent British Asian writing. I cover much broader ground in my teaching, with courses on 19th century, modernist and contemporary novels in English, as well as cultural studies seminars that make use of film and TV programs, children’s fantasy and cross-over literature, to help Japanese students engage with issues relevant to contemporary Britain. As a significant part of my job is to support L2 users of English, I also have a strong interest in developments in ESL pedagogy, especially in the application of task-based language learning.