My research interests are broadly in the early modern and modern cultural history of Japan in its regional, transnational and global contexts. I am particularly fascinated by the changing patterns of knowledge exchange and circulation and the history of language and translation. Currently I am working on a book project called “Beyond Edo. Transnational narratives of the Early Modern in 20th-century Japan.” The project approaches 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.
2022-25 Kakenhi project “Rethinking the Future of the Humanities through Emerging Collaborative Practices”
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
‘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.
‘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.
