Dr Polina Barducci is the Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of East Asian Studies. After being a MEXT research student at the Department of Japanese History, the University of Tokyo in 2014-2016, Dr Barducci continued her training in Japan and earned her MA degree in Japanese History at Kokugakuin University. She started her PhD in Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) in 2018, during which she was also a Japan Foundation Fellow at the Historiographical Institute, the University of Tokyo (2022). Since obtaining her doctoral degree in 2023, Dr Barducci held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Tokyo in 2023-2024 and at Lund University (Sweden) in 2024-2025. Since 2024, she has also been affiliated with the collaborative research project “Translation of Japanese Classical and Medieval Legal Documents and Research for Japanese Historical terms” at the Historiographical Institute, the University of Tokyo.
Dr Barducci specialises in premodern history of Japan. Her research focuses on the role of ritual in political and diplomatic relations during the rule of the Ashikaga shogunate (1336–1573). Having been part of the project on the global history of separation, Dr Barducci also investigates the transformation of family and the role of women’s networks in Japanese politics of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.