Torsten Weber

Torsten Weber is a historian of modern and contemporary East Asia specializing in the history of Japanese-Chinese relations and interactions. Trained in History and East Asian Studies at the universities of Mainz, Shanghai (Fudan), London (SOAS), and Leiden, he received his Ph.D. in Japanese Studies from Heidelberg University in 2012. His recent monograph Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan. Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony (Palgrave Transnational History Series, 2018) analyzes how ‘Asia’ as a contested concept in mainstream public discourse has challenged political and epistemological hierarchies in East Asia and the world. At the DIJ, Torsten’s research includes projects on the First World War and the interwar period in East Asian history, happiness in modern Japan’s socio-political discourse, war memory, and the ‘history wars’ in East Asia. For his ongoing research project on John Rabe’s Nanjing war diaries he was awarded a three-year research grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since February 2020, Torsten has been in charge of the DIJ’s science communication and public relations.

Research blog on the Rabe Diaries project: https://rabediaries.hypotheses.org/