Since its inception in 2008, the Oxford Japanese History Workshop (OJHW) has fostered a community of intellectuals whose research touches on a wide range of themes, topics, and timescales in Japanese history. The OJHW has been especially committed to the development of highly innovative approaches in global and transnational history.
With an ever-growing number of doctoral researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and affiliated researchers, the OJHW is a burgeoning centre of expertise that continues to generate new understandings of East Asia and beyond. Its members have produced research that has appeared, or will be appearing, in journals ranging from Modern Asian Studies and The Journal of Asian Studies to The Historical Journal, Past and Present, and The American Historical Review. The OJHW has and continues to host international conferences that bring together specialists in Japanese history and many others working across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
Beyond academia, the OJHW is engaged in a range of outreach and service activities. It strives to bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the general public, working with nonprofit organisations, artists, farming communities, and grassroots activists. The work of OJHW members has appeared in sites ranging from local newspapers to major international events such as the Venice Biennale.
Some participant publications that have benefitted from the workshop include:
Lewis Bremner, "The Magic Lantern as a Lens for Observing the Eye in Tokugawa Japan: Technology, translation, and the Rangaku movement", Modern Asian Studies 54, no. 3 (2020): 691-729.
Natalia Doan, "The 1860 Japanese Embassy and the Antebellum African American Press", The Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (December 2019): 997-1020.
Sho Konishi, "The Emergence of an International Humanitarian Organization in Japan: The Tokugawa Origins of the Japanese Red Cross", The American Historical Review 119, no. 4 (2014): 1129-1153.
Yu Sakai, "Survive to be critical: The Wartime Graphic as a ‘masquerading’ media in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905", War in History, (June 2020).
