News

Date: 6 - 8 January 2027 Location: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (In-person) The Call for Papers is available here. We are pleased to invite you to the Eleventh International Conference on Iranian Linguistics (ICIL11).The ICIL conferences aim to bring together linguists and philologists of different theoretical backgrounds working on …

Joining by invitation from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, Professor Nilsson-Wright's talk focused on domestic politics and the foreign policy of the ROK, as well as regional geopolitics and ROK policy towards the DPRK, the United States, Japan, and relation between the ROK and the UK.

Professor Barak Kushner's latest publication, The Geography of Injustice: East Asia’s Battle between Memory and History, has received an honourable mention for the John Whitney Hall Prize (Japan) in this year's AAS book prizes.

Professor Nilsson-Wright has featured on the BBC's Today programme and France24's The Debate, providing comment and expert analysis of the recent election victory by Japan's Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi.Listen at the links below:BBC - Today Programme (Prof Nilsson-Wright features around the 49 minute mark)France24 - The Debate (video)

AMES Sultan Qaboos Professor of Modern Arabic Studies and Chair of the Judges for the 2025 Banipal Said Ghobash Translation Prize will be in conversation with this year’s prize winner, Marilyn Booth, at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, on Friday 13 February. Register for online or in-person attendance here: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/celebrating-2…

The event will take place at Foyle's bookshop, London on Friday 13 Mar 2026 19:00 - 20:30.To buy a ticket & for more information, follow the link below to the Foyle's website:https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/emi-yagi-and-satoshi-yagisawa-in-conversation 

Professor Montgomery FBA and Dr Lydia Wilson have launched a new podcast series. Called The Classical Arabic Literature Podcast, the first four episodes, covering pre-Islamic Arabia, science and theology in ninth century Iraq, philosophical encyclopedism, and twelfth century mysticism in Islamic Spain, are available from most podcast platforms. Jus…

On January 27th, FAMES, the Japan Studies section, and the Centre for Geopolitics held the third of their annual collaborative seminars with Keio University’s Center for Strategy examining UK-Japan relations in the context of changing geopolitics. This year, our collaboration was also supported by the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advan…

Professor Barak Kushner has given two talks this week at NYU Shanghai, see posters below for more information.

Professor Barak Kushner's recent publication The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle Between Memory and History (Cornell University Press, 2024) has been nominated for the Modern Japanese History Association Book Prize.For more information on the prize, and the other shortlist works, please go to: https://mjha.org/Book-Prize  

Professor Montgomery’s book Fate the Hunter: Early Arabic Hunting Poetry (2024) is featured in the exhibition “Poetry of Birds” at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, Dubai, an exploration of the timeless symbolism of birds in arts, poetry, and jewelry, focusing on the dialogue between 19th and 20th century Western jewelry and Islamic arts, with poetr…

A History of Modern Hebrew Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2026:https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-of-modern-hebrew-literature/FC9EB3E2BE7689BC3BFD5A3B016F0212  

Our third-year student Zazie Chen is currently on the Year Abroad at Hokkaido University. Inspired by a workshop that we ran in 2024 with master Tatekawa Shinoharu, Zazie got very passionate about the art of rakugo, a form of traditional Japanese storytelling, often comic. So Zazie decided to join a rakugo club as part of the extracurricular activi…

We just completed a marvellous two-day workshop from 8-9 January 2026 at the new North Annex Building of Keio University in Tokyo. The event was graciously sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the Keio University Institute of East Asian studies. Hosted by Professor Kawashima Shin from Tokyo University and Dr Tom Barrett from Keio Universi…