Contact details
Room 2S1, Arts 1 (Burns) Building
Tel +64 3 479 4164
Email takashi.shogimen@otago.ac.nz
Academic qualifications
2020: MAE
2006: FRHistS
1998: PhD University of Sheffield
1991: LL.B. Keio University
Research interests
Takashi Shogimen is a historian of political thought. His main areas of research interests are medieval European political thought, modern Japanese political thought, and patriotism and nationalism.
His 2007 book in English offered a comprehensive reappraisal of the political thought of William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347), a Franciscan theologian and philosopher. His 2013 book in Japanese, which demonstrated the emergence of distinctively European political thinking at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, won the 2013 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, one of the most prestigious prizes for humanities researchers and social scientists in Japan. His 2019 books in Japanese explored the history and theory of patriotism in Western Europe and Japan. He has also published approximately 50 articles in English and Japanese on medieval European political thought, comparative political thought, and modern Japanese political thought, while actively contributing to national media in Japan commenting on current affairs, especially nationalism. He is currently working on books in English on patriotism.
Before coming to Otago, Takashi was Research Fellow at Clare Hall in the University of Cambridge and the Research Assistant for the British Academy's Medieval Texts Editorial Committee. In May 2005, he was Visiting Professor at the Department of History in the University of Helsinki, Finland and, in late 2009, he was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science in Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Takashi was awarded the Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand twice in 2006–2007 and 2008–2010. He is currently a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea.
View Takashi's Inaugural Professorial Lecture
Areas of research supervision
Political thought in Europe, 1150–1650; medieval European history; Modern Japanese intellectual history.
Courses taught
- HIST108 From Medieval to Modern Europe
- HIST123 Revolutions
- HIST215 Heretics, Witches, and Inquisitors
- HIST242 Histories of Crime and Punishment
- HIST341 Patriotism: From Joan of Arc to Kamikaze
- HIST452 Rethinking History
- HIST481 Special Study
- HIST490 Dissertation
Editorial responsibilities
Takashi is currently on the editorial board/committee of the Journal of Religious History and on the editorial advisory board of Nihon Kenkyu, a journal of Japanese Studies published by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto.