Joel Littler

Daiwa Scholar in Japanese Studies 

Joel was formerly a lecturer at Thammasat University and Mahidol University in Thailand, where he taught philosophy. His research centres on the noncolonial intellectual, cultural, and political phenomena that emerged in nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan as a reaction to the perceived failures of the Meiji Ishin to improve ordinary people’s lives. This intersects with his interest in the history of philosophy and religion in Asia’s other noncolonised country, Thailand. 

Publications

Littler, Joel (2023, forthcoming) Meiji Civil War Losers in Siam: Miyazaki Tōten’s Utopian Farming Community (1877-1896), In Lewis Bremner, Manimporok Dotulong, and Sho Konishi (eds.) Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World (Leiden: Brill).

Matanle, Peter; Littler, Joel; and Slay, Oliver (2019) Imagining Disasters in the Era of Climate Change: Is Japan’s Seawall a New Maginot Line?, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 17(13), 1.

Courses Taught

Lecturer for East Asian Survey, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Tutor for Modern History of Japan in the Wider World, Faculty of History