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Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Arts & Humanities Department of East Asian Studies
Personal website
Email tpb41@cam.ac.uk
Department link

Thomas is a Japan-trained historian of East Asia, who specialises in the international, diplomatic and transnational history of the region up until the end of the long nineteenth century.

Before taking up his current post in Cambridge, Thomas was trained in the Japanese T��y��shi �|��ʷ tradition, completing his BA at Aichi University (the successor to the Shanghai-based To�� D��bun Shoin �|��ͬ�ĕ�Ժ) and his MA at the University of Tokyo. In 2016, he began his PhD at the University of Tokyo as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science DC Research Fellow under the guidance of Professors Murata Y��jir�� ۶�� and Kawashima Shin ��u��. In 2019, he moved to the University of Oxford to complete his doctoral work under the supervision of Professor Henrietta Harrison. He has also studied at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and at National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Titled ��Foreigners and the Making of the Chinese Diplomat��, Thomas�� doctoral thesis evaluates the significance of foreigners who were employed as counsellors, secretaries, legal advisors and consuls in late Qing and early Republican China��s legations and consulates, as a means to trace how Western European diplomatic culture and practice came to be institutionalised in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project was funded in Japan by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and in Britain by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Parts of the project have been published in the renowned Japanese journals Shigaku Zasshi ʷѧ�j�I and T��y�� Gakuh�� |��ѧ��, and in an edited French volume published in October 2021 by the ?cole fran?aise d'Extr��me-Orient. Further articles and monographs in the English and Japanese languages are also currently in preparation.

Thomas�� current project seeks to develop an analysis of how China and the way it related to the outside world in the pre-modern era was understood both in the Japanese and European intellectual contexts. He is also developing other projects on the relationship between Qing China and Chos?n Korea in the late nineteenth century, and on the history of Japanese sinology.

What's on

Event Type (field_event_type)

A triptych of three plant-themed paintings: the left shows large leaves, the center features a dark forest scene, and the right depicts vibrant, stylized foliage and flowers.

Art Exhibition: 'Life Within Landscapes'

09/06/2024 at 10.00

Explore ��Ǻ��'s newest exhibition, 'Life Within Landscapes', showcasing works by three Cambridge-based female contemporary artists, inspired by their Caribbean heritage.