Michael Facius
Associate Professor, Tokyo College
Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo
My work is concerned with the past, present, and future of knowledge systems in East Asian and global contexts, with a focus on the humanities. I work at the interface of theory and practice, building capacity for transdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines and beyond the university. At Tokyo College, I am spearheading the research cluster “The Humanities, Society, and the Future of Academic Knowledge” and co-leading the collaborative research project “Reimagining Academic Practice.”
I studied linguistics, Japanese studies, and political science in Bonn, and received a Dr. phil. in Japanese studies and global history from Freie Universität Berlin. Before my current position at the University of Tokyo, I served as coordinator of the Graduate School Global Intellectual History at Freie Universität/Humboldt Universität Berlin, followed by a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at University College London.
Recent Publication
metttasphere: Narrating Identities across Borders and Media
How do we narrate our identities in the contemporary world across different media and national borders? The hybrid academic/artistic collection "metttasphere" invited 21 artists and researchers from Japan and abroad to explore this question in three chapters: "Mediated identities", "Migrations/translations" and “Queer & disabled post-identities."
Current Research Project
The “Tang and Song Eight Masters” in 19th-century Japan
Currently I am working on a project on the history of editions of the “Tang and Song Eight Masters” in 19th-century Japan, together with a MEXT-funded research student. The project builds on my long-standing interest in the history of Chinese knowledge in Japan, on which I have published widely in English, Japanese, and German.
Recent Projects
The mettta project
A three-part project on contemporary identity formation, developed with Goethe Institute Tokyo. Across an Instagram interview series (@metttazzzine), the two-day artistic/academic festival "metttafestival," and the bilingual publication metttasphere, the project traced how people narrate identity across different media and audiences, and across national borders.
Rethinking the Future of the Humanities through Emerging Collaborative Practices
A JSPS-funded, multimodal project asking how new forms of collaboration can point a way forward for humanistic knowledge production. It combined experimental practice in research and teaching with an ethnography of higher education carried out at universities on three continents.
Research Interests
History and sociology of knowledge · the future of the humanities · inter- and transdisciplinarity · global history · Japanese history, early modern and modern · Software studies · Identity studies
Elsewhere