Jun. 28: Intervention at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
Multidisciplinary Exchange THE KETCHUP-BOAT – Stranded Cargo – A Restitution Reconsidered In collaboration with sculptor Hannes Brunner and students from the teaching initiative “Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry” Project Teaser: A fishing boat lies on a meadow by the sea. On board: hundreds of expired ketchup bottles, remnants of European overproduction – exported, […]
Jun. 30, 2026: Research Talk at Universität Tübingen
Talk title: “The Boreal Pacific in the Making of Japanese Science” Abstract Japan is an archipelago in the Pacific, though its history remains scarcely linked to the Pacific world. This talk foregrounds locations in the Sea of Okhotsk to discuss how a new set of questions arises once historians turn their attention to the material […]
Jun. 10, 2026: Research Talk at Trinity College Dublin
Talk title: “Japanese Studies as Critical Humanities Education”
Jun. 11, 2026: Research Talk @ Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin “The Sea of Okhotsk as a Maritime Frontier”
Workshop “Maritime Asia Re/Defined: (Im)mobility, (Dis)connection, and (De)centralization” Convened by Ronald Po Talk Title: “The Sea of Okhotsk as a Maritime Frontier: Tokugawa Japan and the Vision of a Boreal Empire.”
Jun. 05, 2026: Research Talk @ Max Planck Institute Berlin
Workshop “Between Observatio and Scholastic Scientia“ Harnack House Berlin, June 3–5, 2026. Talk Title: “From Indigenous Knowledge to Academic Authority: Dutch Studies in Japan, 1600–1870” with Matsukata Fuyuko, University of Tokyo
Apr. 22, 2026: Research Talk @ Columbia University “The Pacific as a Method Prompts and Perspectives for Modern Japan”
Research Talk at EALAC Department, Columbia University, on April 22, 2026. The Pacific as a Method: Prompts and Perspectives for Modern Japan Japan is an archipelago in the Pacific, though its history remains scarcely linked to the Pacific world. This talk foregrounds three maritime locations in the vicinity of “Japan” that illustrate how a new […]
Carina Suter wins the UZH Semester Prize for fall 2025!
Carina Suter wins the UZH Semester Prize for fall 2025! Carina wrote her brilliant paper “Flax, ‘harakeke’ and ‘Phormium tenax’ as a Site of British Ecological Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand” in my MA-Seminar “Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry” last year. Her prize follows on Davide Toschi (fall 2025), Vivianne Rhyner (spring 2024) […]
Black Box of Danish Colonialism at the Bernese Museum of History
Jil Rissi’s artistic research project “(De)Colonization through Greenlandic Lenses,” reflects on the dynamics of conflicted memories in Greenland and Denmark. Her artistic installation, a black cubus with peepholes into photographic memories by Greenlandic photographer John Møller, invites observers to reflect on their own position vis à vis the lived reality of a place that is, […]
The Boreal Pacific in the Making of Eurasian Science (book project in progress)
When Japanese geographer Mamiya Rinzō traveled up the Amur River in the spring of 1808, he was carrying out a cartographic project at the order of the shogunal astronomical service and mapped Japanese interests in the Sino-Russian borderland. Contrary to the common conception of early modern Japan’s “seclusion” from the outside world, the Tokugawa Shogunate […]
Mar. 25. 2026: Book Launch at the Asia Society of Switzerland
Talk at the Library: How an Oceanic Current shaped Modern Japan Book Talk on The Kuroshio Frontier with Author Jonas Rüegg Japan is often viewed through a land-based lens. Yet as an archipelago in the northwestern Pacific, its history has long been shaped by the sea. In The Kuroshio Frontier: Empire and Environment in the […]