Former Team Members

I specialised in early medieval (10th–14th century) Japanese history. Following my graduate studies of European history at the University of Hamburg, I continued my research on medieval conceptions of sacred kingship, turning my attention this time on Japan. For this purpose, I was a visiting scholar at the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tōkyō between 2008 and 2012 and received my PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 2013, publishing my thesis in the following year (LIT-Verlag). Also in 2014, I took up a position at LMU Munich as an Academic Researcher and was appointed Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessor) für Japanese Studies at Bonn University in 2017, continuing untill 2024. During this time, I participated in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) “Macht und Herrschaft” (Mathias Becher) as Co-leader of the Japanese Studies subproject and thought classes in premodern intellectual and religious history. I am co-editor of a special issue of the Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung (Band 45 (2022): “Historisches Erzählen im vormodernen Japan”) and published several articles and book chapters on medieval kingship, historiography, religion and violence as well as on Watsuji Tetsurō. In the academic year 2023/24, I was a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyōtō, where I prepared a book on Miki Kiyoshi’s Philosophy of History. In October 2024, I joined the SNSF project “Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature” at the University of Zurich. I investigate early medieval historiographies, among else the 12th century kanbun chronicle Fusō ryakki, with consideration of perceptions of contingency in particular.