News

Dr. Hong-June You (유홍준), Director-General of the National Museum of Korea, gave a lecture to the University of Cambridge community on 29 September, attracting an audience of more than 140 people. The lecture has already received coverage from several major Korean news outlets, including The Dong-A Ilbo and The Asia Business Daily. Dr. You is one of…

Friday 6th November 2026, 5pm to 6pm, in the Parlour, Magdalene College.Dr Despina Magkanari (Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies, Martin Luther Universitat Halle-Wittenberg) will launch her book Orientalism and the Making of Turkology in the Age of the Enlightenment (Boydell, 2026) with an illustrated talk.Set against the b…

The Japanese Studies Subject Group is pleased to announce that Professor Mickey Adolphson, Keidanren Chair of Japanese Studies, has been named in the Japanese Foreign Minister's Commendations for 2026. This commendation recognises Professor Adolphson’s distinguished contributions to Japanese Studies and to strengthening academic and cultural ties b…

The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Sang-Keun Yoo, who joined the University of Cambridge in September 2026 as Assistant Professor in Korean Popular Culture.Dr Yoo is a scholar of Korean and global popular culture, science fiction, literature, and visual media. His research explores popular culture in relation…

Prof Laura Moretti brought a rare type of music from early modern Japan to Cambridge. Shinnai bushi is a form of "narrative music" where a tayū recites a story to the accompaniment of the shamisen. With lyrics imbued with the melodrama of tragic love, shinnai bushi was extremely popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the pleasure qu…

“East Asia: Imperial Demobilization and State Military Mobilization in an Age of Postwar Panic,” presented at the 2026 Hoover Institution Workshop on Modern China and Taiwan, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, August 5, 2026. 

 Assef Ashraf’s Making and Remaking Empire in Early Qajar Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2024) was awarded Honorable Mention for the Saidi-Sirjani Book Prize (2026), which is awarded every two years in recognition of outstanding scholarship in Iranian Studies.More information about the award is available here: https://associationforiranianstudie…

Join us on 9–10 July to explore the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, meet our academics and students, discover our languages and degree programmes.Whether you're just starting to explore your options or preparing to apply, we'd love to welcome you.

Prof Laura Moretti has been invited to participate in a MOOC course on the global codex led by colleagues at Keio University. The filming took place on 18 June 2026 at the Cambridge University Library. Prof Moretti's contribution focusses on her current research project on books with engineered design from early modern Japan. Prof Moretti explored …

Prof Laura Moretti and alumnus Joseph Bills were invited in Paris to present their research at the international symposium "It's no laughing matter! Laughter and seriousness in Japanese literature", organized by Université Pari Cité and the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilizations de l'Asie Orientale. Prof Moretti's talk: The Power of Lies: Approp…

Dr Ani Avetisyan, Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, has recently published a book titled “Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic, and Garshuni Versions of Ibn al-Akfānī’s Treatise on Bloodletting”.  What can one eighteenth-century Judaeo-Arabic medical manuscript reveal about language, knowledge, and scribal practice? In th…

Dr Nuri Kim, Associate Professor in Korean Studies, published an article combining Game Studies and Media Archeology in the journal Game Studies. The article delves into the checkered history of the video game arcade in South Korea, placing it against the backdrop of the country's turbulent history from military dictatorship to the IMF crisis and b…

This newly released documentary by CNA Insider examines Unit 731, Japan's wartime biological weapons programme. Professor Kushner features throughout, providing insights from his research on Japan's war crimes.To watch the documentary, please follow the links to YouTube below. CNA'S INSIDE UNIT 731: JAPAN'S SECRET HUMAN EXPERIMENTSEpisode 1: A Time…

On Friday, 29 May 2026, Dr David Mozina ran a three-hour seminar on “Reading Sources in situ: How Local Genealogies, Hagiographies, and Images Live in Daoist Ritual Contexts” at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.  The postgraduate seminar, Archives et société en Chine, is convened by Profs Alain Arrault and Michela Bussotti. 

The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies has been recognised among the UK's leading institutions for Asian & Middle Eastern Studies in the Complete University Guide 2026 rankings. The Faculty was ranked first for Asian Studies and received leading recognition for Middle Eastern Studies.