My research interests are broadly in the study of global knowledge systems past and present. Much of my research output so far focuses on the history of knowledge exchange and circulation in Japan in East Asian and transnational contexts, touching on themes of Confucian and Sinological knowledge, historiography, philology, the “humanities”, language, translation, music, and diplomacy.
Currently I am working on three major projects:
- A book project called “Beyond Edo. Transnational narratives of the Early Modern in 20th-century Japan.” The project approaches contemporary stories about the early modern period in Japan from the vantage point of transnational and global history and is comprised of several case studies that together showcase the diverse forms of the Japanese engagement with the past.
- A Kakenhi-funded project called “Rethinking the Future of the Humanities through Emerging Collaborative Practices” (funding period 2022-25). The project will carry out a multi-modal analysis of emerging collaborative practices in the humanities (e.g. public humanities, innovative teaching, YouTube scholarship) to understand how they influence knowledge production and how the traditional humanities can use these to reclaim relevance.
- A hybrid research/art publication tentatively called “metttasphere: Approximations to Transnational Identity Building in Art and Social Media”, building on the results of the experimental festival metttafestival I co-organized with Goethe Institut Tokyo in October 2022.
2021- Associate Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo
2021 The University of Tokyo Excellent Young Researcher
2020 Project Assistant Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo
2018–20 British Academy Newton International Fellow, University College London
2016-18 Academic Coordinator, Graduate School Global Intellectual History, Freie Universität Berlin
2016 Dr. phil. in Japanese Studies and Global History, Freie Universität Berlin
2008 MA in Japanese Studies, Linguistics and Political Science, Bonn University
‘知識史から見た学問の「悪」’ [“Evil” in scholarship as seen from the history of knowledge] , 東京大学東アジア芸文書院編『私たちは世界の「悪」にどう立ち向かうか』, Tokyo: Transview Press, 2022, 303–324.
‘Practical Learning. The Transnational Intellectual Career of a Scholarly Value in 19th-Century Japan.’ In: Writing the History of the Humanities. Questions, Themes, and Approaches, ed. by Herman Paul. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 173–192.
‘From Kangaku to Shinagaku: On the Growing Significance of Contemporary China for Sinitic Scholarship in Nineteenth-Century Japan,’ in Sino-Japanese Reflections. Literary and Cultural Interactions between China and Japan in Early Modernity, ed. by Joshua A. Fogel und Matthew Fraleigh, Berlin: DeGruyter, 2022, 261-284.
‘Between “Sung Theatre” and Asakusa Opera. In Search of Italianità in Early Japanese Opera History,’ in Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective. Reimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by Axel Körner and Paolo M. Kühl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 278-297.
Symposium Series “The Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences.” 3. Perspectives from the Sociology of Knowledge (Tokyo College Booklet Series 18), ed. by Michael Facius. Tokyo: Tokyo College, 2022.
‘A Rankean Moment in Japan: The Persona of the Historian and the Globalization of the Discipline, c. 1900,’ Modern Intellectual History 19,1 (2022), 217-240.
‘Terms of Government: Early Modern Japanese Concepts of Rulership and Political Geography in Translation,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 82,3 (2021), 521-537.
‘Using Sheet Music in Cultural History: Nippon Yusen Kaisha and the Japanese National Anthem,’ in SAGE Research Methods for Primary Sources (2021).
‘Transcultural Philology in 19th-century Japan: the case of Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827-1910),’ Philological Encounters 3 (2018), 3-33.
China übersetzen: Globalisierung und chinesisches Wissen in Japan im 19. Jahrhundert [Translating China: Chinese knowledge and globalization in nineteenth-century Japan], Campus: Frankfurt am Main, 2017.
‘Japanisch – Kundoku – Chinesisch. Zur Geschichte von Sprache und Übersetzung in Japan’ [Japanese – Kundoku – Chinese. On the history of language and translation in Japan], Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38 (2012), 217-242.
