Dr Eiko Honda
Eiko’s research uncovers intellectual paradigms that existed in modern Japanese history, but not in its historiography. She does so by elucidating underlying logic behind transdisciplinary works of scientist-polymaths and surrounding non-state knowledge transfers across national and disciplinary borders. These were paradigms where ‘humanistic’ knowledge impacted the articulation of ‘scientific truths’ amidst extraordinary social, ecological, and political changes.
She currently works on a monograph project The Emergence of Queer Nature: Minakata Kumagusu and the Making of Microbial Paradigm, 1887-1912. Her latest article “Minakata Kumagusu and the Emergence of Queer Nature: The Civilisation Theory, Buddhist Science and Microbes, 1887-1892” is forthcoming from Modern Asian Studies. The research has been funded by the Toshiba International Foundation, Japan Foundation and the Endowment Committee, GB Sasakawa, Oxford Sasakawa, British Association for Japanese Studies, and Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust among many others.
In parallel to her work in intellectual history, she investigates forms of knowledge-making required in the time of climate crisis in collaboration with scholars of other regions, disciplines, and periods. Recent results include “Undoing the Discipline: History in the Time of Climate Crisis and COVID-19” (Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020). She simultaneously cultivates the field of the environmental humanities within Japanese Studies. Her research agenda “Knowledge without Supremacy: Japanese Studies in the Face of Global Ecological Crisis” won the Grand Prize at the Toshiba International Foundation's 30th Anniversary Essay Contest (2019).
The interdisciplinary approach builds on her background in art curation and history of science. Prior to the present appointment, she was the 2021 Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. She completed DPhil in History at the University of Oxford (2021) following a curatorial fellowship awarded by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs (2013-2016).
