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, […]
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 […]
“The Kuroshio Frontier” discussed in The Economist
The Kuroshio has attracted wider attention in Japan and beyond this year, as it marked the end of the longest “Large Meander” of the Kuroshio on record––in the few decades that the phenomenon has been known, that is. Why does that make headlines? As a warm and nutrient rich current, the Kuroshio has vast impacts […]
Interview in ORB, the free paper of the Bonin Islands (English / 日本語)
A bilingual conversation about local history and global significance of the most beautiful archipelago in the north Pacific.
Public lecture in Chichijima, Ogasawara (Bonin Islands)
USK Coffee, Chichijima, Ogasawara. Lecture Title: “島谷市左衛門と小笠原諸島最古の地図Shimaya Ichizaemon to Ogasawara shotô saiko no chizu [Shimaya Ichizaemon and the oldest map of the Ogasawara Islands].” (In Japanese.)