Pia Jolliffe

Pia Jolliffe is a historian of premodern Japan with a particular interest in historical anthropology, children and women's experiences of the transition from sixteenth to seventeenth century Japan, Buddhist temples as places of memory, and the history Christianity in Japan. Her academic background is a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford, a DESS in Asian Studies from the University of Geneva and a Master’s in Japanese Studies from the University of Vienna.

Current projects:

1.  a monograph on girls, communities and civil war Japan (ca. 1570s until 1630s). Based on written sources as well as material culture, oral legends and songs, my research focuses on the case study of the girls and young women of Toyotomi Hidetsugu's household whose individual lives were intimately related to the political conflicts of the late Sengoku and early Edo periods (ca.1570s until 1630s). My study highlights the role of Buddhist temples and communities in preserving and transmitting the records of these girls’ lives. I argue that viewing the transition from sixteenth to the seventeenth century Japan ‘through’ these girls and young women draws our attention to individuals and communities who lost their lives and livelihoods during Japan's "re-unification" process and thus to alternative histories of the period.

2. a co-edited volume on religion, translation and transnational relations between Japan and Early Modern Europe (with Katja Triplett and Orii Yoshimi)

Pia Jolliffe teaches tutorials and lecture courses in early modern Japanese history. 

Recent publications:

Books:

• (forthcoming) Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. Stuttgart: J.M. Metzler (co-editors Katja Triplett and Orii Yoshimi)
• 2018 Southeast Asian Education in Modern History: Schools, Manipulation, and Contest. London: Routledge (co-editor Thomas Richard Bruce)
• 2018 Prisons and Forced Labour in Japan. The Colonization of Hokkaido, 1881-1894. London: Routledge
• 2016 Learning, Migration and Intergenerational Relations. The Karen and the Gift of Education. London: Palgrave Macmillian.

Articles and chapters in edited volumes:

JAPANESE STUDIES

•  (forthcoming) "Childhood in Premodern Japanese Religion" in Courtney Bruntz ed Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press (with Or Porath) 
• (forthcoming)  '"This Iaponian Palme-tree of Christian Fortitude" - Jesuit letters from Japan and the English (Counter-) Reformation', in Katja Triplett, Yoshimi Orii and Pia Jolliffe eds. Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. Stuttgart: J.M. Metzler.
• 2023 ‘Naughty, bold, and blessed: Sixteenth-century Japanese children’s voices mediated in the writings of Luís Fróis’ Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 16, no. 2, 211-228.
• 2023 ‘Potato Puppet Theater/Beating the Beauties: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Picture Book for Children’, with Keller Kimbrough, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 16, no. 2, 197-210.
• 2022 ‘Die Tensho-Mission: Beginn einer schwierigen transnationalen Beziehung.’ In: Bernhard Scheid, Religion-in-Japan: Ein digitales Handbuch. Vienna: University of Vienna, https://www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an/Essays/Tensho-Mission
• 2021 ‘Japanese Woodblock Prints and the Brady Collection’, Christ Church Library Newsletter, Volume 12, Issues 2-3, 2020-21, 15-18.
• 2021  ‘Jesuit translation practices in sixteenth-century Japan, Sanctos no gosagueo no uchi nuqigaqi and Luis de Granada’, with Alessandro Bianchi, in Jieun Kiaer et al Missionary Translators: Translations of Christian Texts in East Asia. London: Routledge.
• 2020 ‘Forced Labour in Imperial Japan’s First Colony: Hokkaido’ The Asia-Pacific Journal. Japan Focus. Vol. 18, Issue 2, Number 6.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• 2020 ‘The Integration of Syrian Asylum Seekers in Austria in Light of Catholic Social Teaching’, in Leonardo Schiocchet, Christine Nölle-Karimi and Monika Mokre (eds) Agency and Tutelage in Forced Migration, ROR-n Plattform 2(1), Vienna: ROR-n, Austrian Academy of Sciences,  196-200.
• 2019 ‘Ageing and Fertility: Legal and Ethical Perspectives’, with William Jolliffe, in Andelka M Phillips, Thana C de Campos and Jonathan Herring (eds) Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 264-274.
• 2018 ‘Honouring the elders: The common good among Karen communities – a multi-sited ethnography’, with Shirley Worland, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 29/2, 158-170.
• 2018 ‘Child Migration to the UK. Hopes and Realities’, with Samuel Burke OP, in Ben Ryan (ed) Fortress Britain? Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for a Post-Brexit Britain, London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 134-153.
• 2017 ‘Karen youth transitions at the Thai-Myanmar border’ Journal of Youth Studies 20/10, 1313-1327
• 2016 ‘Night-time and refugees. Evidence from the Thai-Myanmar border’ Journal of Refugee Studies 29/1, 1-18.