Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Japanese Studies Offers New Scholarship in Partnership with the Toshiba Foundation

A new partnership with Toshiba International Foundation has established a new Toshiba Cambridge Japan and the World Graduate Scholarship.

Chuan Lyu Lectures, 2017

The 2017 Chuan Lyu Lectures in Taiwan Studies were given by the well-known Taiwan anthropologist Prof. CHANG Hsun (張珣) under the overall title of "Religion and Social Transformations in Contemporary Taiwan". Prof. Chang received her Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 and is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. Prof. Chang presented two fascinating lectures on the current developments of the Mazu cult in Taiwan. For details of the talks, including photos from the event, please...

Brexit and the importance of languages for Britain

"The UK desperately needs more, not fewer, internationally minded citizens who are competent in languages other than English" - In the second of a new series of comment pieces written by linguists at Cambridge, Dr Heather Inwood, Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Chinese Literature and Culture, argues that Britain needs to improve its language skills to build trade relations and break through cultural divides.

Research in Rabbinic Hebrew Philology

Over the course of the academic years 2016-2019, the Hebrew philology group at FAMES will host a research project sponsored by the AHRC. The title of the project is: A Diplomatic Edition of Mishna-Codex Kaufmann (A50). The core project team consists of Dr Michael Rand (PI), Dr Aaron Horkohl (Co-I) and Dr Shai Heijmans (Researcher), and in the years 2017-2019 we also expect to be joined by a second Researcher. The aim of our work will be to produce a critical edition of Ms. Kaufmann A50, the single most important (almost) complete European manuscript of the Mishna, and it is our hope that this edition will benefit both researchers in Rabbinic language and culture, as well as those members of the wider public who have an interest in classical Jewish texts.

2009 Hakka Yimin temple festival priest chanting.jpg

Modalities of Doing Religion

‘How do people do religion in China?’ This is a much better question to ask than ‘How many religions are there in China?’ In examining the ways in which Chinese people have been engaged in religious activities historically as well as today Dr Adam Chau has identified five ‘modalities of doing religion’: discursive/scriptural; personal-cultivational; liturgical; immediate-practical; and relational.

Thinking Through Agriculture

From early China’s legalist philosophers through to Mao Zedong, one of the most enduring descriptions of China over the past three millennia has been its image as the ultimate agrarian society. Professor Roel Sterckx is studying how farming life influenced the political and social ideologies that shaped the Chinese empire.

Documenting dialects

Over the last twenty years Professor Geoffrey Khan, together with his PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, has been undertaking a major project to document all of the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects. Some of the dialects are now spoken by only a handful of people and some have become extinct over the last few years.

The Parthenon Mosque

The early modern Parthenon was a monumental palimpsest. The layers were architectural: the Parthenon mosque had previously been a church of the Virgin Mary, and before that a temple of Athena. But how these layers were interpreted depended on who was looking: European or Ottoman travellers, or the muezzin of Athens.

Latest news

Postgraduate Open Day 3rd November 2017

Oct 13, 2017

Hans van de Ven on the China-Japan History Wars

Oct 13, 2017

Dr Barak Kushner Delivers Talk on “Japanese War Crimes Trials and the Dissolution of the Japanese Empire in China”

Oct 09, 2017

New China Publication from Robert Weatherley

Oct 09, 2017

Centre of Islamic Studies Graduate Studentships for 2017 - 2018

Sep 28, 2017

Modern Japanese Studies and Cambridge University Library: from Kokugaku to Japanology

Sep 26, 2017

The shifting landscape from imperial to postwar East Asia: War Crimes, Trials, and the Geography of Power

Sep 22, 2017

Guest seminar from Professor Suzuki Norio 'The Reality of Postwar Revolution: A View of the Tokyo Preventive Center and Asian Marxism'

Sep 21, 2017

Dr John Nilsson-Wright testimony to the House of Commons Defence Committee North Korea Inquiry and Chatham House webinar

Sep 20, 2017

Call for Papers Issued - 1st International Conference: Research Initiative on Teaching Persian Language and Literature

Sep 06, 2017

Japanese Studies Offers New Scholarship in Partnership with the Toshiba Foundation

Sep 04, 2017

Dr John Nilsson-Wright on North Korea's latest missile launch over Japan

Aug 30, 2017

China at War: Triumph and tragedy in the Emergence of of the New China, 1937-1952

Aug 24, 2017

John Nilsson-Wright on Japan's response to North Korea. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Aug 24, 2017

Laura Moretti runs the Fourth Graduate Summer School in Japanese Early-modern Palaeography

Aug 18, 2017

John Nilsson-Wright examines the North Korea crisis: What does Kim Jong-un really want?

Aug 16, 2017

Laura Moretti and Christine van Ruymbeke teach Summer School course on the art of the book in Persia and Japan

Jul 31, 2017

Barak Kushner delivers opening remarks at International Symposium

Jul 08, 2017

Krisztina Szilágyi organises an International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds: Christianity in the Islamic World, I-V.

Jul 05, 2017

Barak Kushner Hosts International Conference: Digital Media and Charting the Geography of Power in East Asia

Jul 05, 2017

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Welcome to AMES

Cambridge has a long and distinctive tradition in the study of the Middle East and Asia. This Faculty prides itself on exploring these fields through the local languages and encourages students to learn through real world engagement. If you are interested in these world regions and want to discover their languages, cultures, histories, religions, and politics, then this is the home for you.