Here you will find information about the team at the Institute of Japanese Studies in Leipzig. Find out more about the teaching and research activities of our staff. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding academic reviews or supervision of thesis projects. We’ll be happy to help!
Professor
Staff
Former staff members
Prof. (Emeritus) Dr Steffi Richter
Former Professor of Japanology at the University of Leipzig
Retired since October 2022
Please direct any enquiries to the Japanology Department secretariat
Personal and Research Profile
- Born in Leipzig in 1956
- From 1963 to 1974, attended the Polytechnic Secondary School, the Children’s and Youth Sports School and the Extended Secondary School in Leipzig; in 1975, obtained his Abitur at the Workers’ and Peasants’ Faculty in Halle/Saale (in preparation for studying abroad);
- Studied philosophy from 1975 to 1980 at Lomonosov University in Moscow (dissertation on the problem of teleology in biology)
- September 1980 (until March 1995): research assistant in the East Asia III (Japanology) department of the Asian Studies Section at Humboldt University of Berlin (HUB)
- One-year research stay in 1982/83 at the Faculty of Human Sciences (Philosophy) at the University of Tokyo (Hongô; Monbushô scholarship)
- July 1985: Awarded a PhD on the topic ‘The Development of the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarô (1870–1945)’ at HUB
- 1988–1990 B-level (Habilitation) postgraduate studies at the Department of Philosophy, Martin Luther University Halle-Saale
- 1992–1993 Postdoctoral research fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)/research stay at Chiba University (18 months)
- July 1994 Habilitation at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich on the topic “De-Dualisation: Scientific Thought in Japan between Tradition and Modernity”
- Winter term 1994/95: Visiting professor (Japanology) at Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg
- April 1995 to March 1996: Associate Professor (jokyôju, tenured) at the University of Tokyo (Komaba)
- April 1996: Appointed as a C4 Professor at Leipzig University – began establishing the Department of Japanology (Society and Cultures in Modern Japan)
- Served on numerous appointment committees and bodies, including as a member of the Advisory Board of the German Institute for Japanese Studies/Foundation for German Humanities Institutes Abroad (2003–2011), a member of the DAAD ‘Germans in Japan’ scholarship selection committee (until 2009), liaison lecturer for the ‘Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes’ (since 2001, currently on hold), deputy spokesperson for the Research Training Group ‘Fault Lines of Globalisation’ (until 2012), Member of the Board of Trustees of the JaDe-Verein Foundation (2010 to 2020), liaison lecturer for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (since 2016)
- August to October 2001: Research fellowship from the Japan Foundation (Chiba University)
- September 2005: Visiting professor at the University of Tokyo (Centre of Excellence)
- April to June 2009: JSPS research fellowship (University of Tokyo, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies; Prof. Yoshimi Shun’ya)
- April to June 2015: Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo (Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies; Prof. Kaori Hayashi)
- January 2017 to 30 June 2017 – Visiting Research Scholar (Visiting Professor) at Kyoto University (Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies; Prof. Reiko Tanabe)
- 2020 JSPS Bridge Fellowship (University of Tokyo, Prof. Yoshida Hiroshi, 1 month)
- Retired since October 2022
Dr Anke Scherer
Former acting professor in the Department of Japanology at the University of Bochum (Winter Semester 2023/24)
Contact: Anke Scherer at Ruhr University Bochum
Dr Chantal Weber
Former acting professor in the Department of Japanology at the University of Bonn (Summer Semester 2023)
Contact: Chantal Weber at the University of Cologne
Dr Chantal Weber’s profile page at the University of Cologne
Assistant Professor Dr Julius Weitzdörfer
Former Acting Professor of Japanology at the University of Lüneburg (UL) (2022–2023)
Contact: Julius Weitzdörfer at the FernUniversität in Hagen
Please get in touch via the Secretariat of the Japanology Department at Leipzig University.
Dr Martin Picard
Former Research Assistant
Contact: Please contact the Japanology Department office.
Personal & Research Profile
Before coming to Leipzig, Martin Picard was a lecturer at the Université de Montréal and Université Laval in Canada. In 2013, he completed a Japan Foundation Research Fellowship on Japanese video game culture at Wako University in Tokyo. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and obtained his PhD in literature and film studies from the Université de Montréal. He taught the history and aesthetics of video games, game design, and animation methodologies as part of the Art and Science of Animation programme at the School of Design, Université Laval. He also taught Japanese and Chinese cinema, and Japanese literature and culture in the Department of East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal. His research focuses on the history and culture of Japanese video games, as well as on national and digital cinemas, and on popular culture in its transmedia and transnational manifestations. He is the co-founder and a member of the executive committee of the History of Game Annual Symposium (sahj.ca) and the co-founder and co-chief editor of the Kinephanos journal.
Former Assistant Professor Dr Martin Roth
Prof. Dr Martin Roth has been teaching as an associate professor at Ritsumeikan University’s Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences (Kyoto, Japan) since the winter semester 2019/2020.
Personal & Research Profile
After studying Japanology and Communication and Media Studies at Leipzig University and Waseda University (Japan), I conducted research from 2010 to 2014 as a funded PhD student on the VICI project *Beyond Utopia* – New Politics, the Politics of Knowledge, and the Science Fictional Field of Japan (Prof. Chris Goto Jones) at Leiden University (Netherlands) and as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, working on my doctoral thesis on the political expressive potential of Japanese video games. Following the defence of my doctoral thesis, entitled *Disruptive Conflicts in Computopic Space: Japanese Science Fiction Videogames as Sources of Otherness and Radical Political Imagination in August 2014, I have been a Junior Lecturer in Japanology at Leipzig University since January 2015, working on the topic of ‘Japan in the age of new and digital media’. Since 2014, I have been responsible for reviews for the academic journal *Asiascape: Digital Asia *.
Associate Professor Toshiaki Kobayashi
Former Professor of Japanology at Leipzig
Contact: please contact the Japanology department’s secretariat