University of Otago

Faculty Member, History & Art History

Other Affiliations: University of Otago, Comparative and Cross-Cultural Studies Research Theme
University of Otago, Early Modern Thought Research Theme
The University of Queensland, Centre for the History of European Discourses

Associate Professor of History

About

Research Fields:
History of European Political Thought, 1150-1600; Comparative History of Political Thought, Western Europe and East Asia; Japanese Political Thought in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Takashi Shogimen specialises in the political thought of medieval Europe, with special attention to the transformation of political and ecclesiological discourses in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His recent book offers a fresh reappraisal of the political thought of William of Ockham (c.1285-1347), a Franciscan theologian and philosopher.

Takashi is currently pursuing several lines of research. He has been exploring a cross-cultural approach to the history of political thought, which identifies the differences in political vocabularies, discourses, and doctrines between differing cultural, ethnic, or regional units. More specifically, he is examining the contribution of medicine - a discipline that has been considered irrelevant to political thought - to the making of the discourse on body politic in late medieval Europe and in East Asian worlds. This project, which was supported by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2006-2007, is also leading to an exploration of a new methodology, which highlights the metaphorical nature of past political writings and the thought processes of the authors.  His new project, which has been supported by the Marsden Fund since 2008, is a study of medieval scholastic discourses on peace. He is also working on patriotism and pacifism of Japanese Christian thinkers in early Showa Japan (1926-1945).

Before joining the History Department at Otago, Takashi was Research Fellow at Clare Hall in the University of Cambridge and the Research Assistant for the Medieval Texts Editorial Committee, the British Academy. In May 2005, he was Visiting Professor at the Department of History in the University of Helsinki, Finland. Takashi is currently a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Affiliate of the Centre for the History of European Discourses in the University of Queensland. In late 2009, he was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science in Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.

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