Members
5th
● Niels VAN STEENPAAL Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Intellectual and Cultural History
Research Topic: The Creation of Man: Collective Biography in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan
Short Introduction
After studying Japanese and Chinese history at Leiden University, Niels became fascinated with the frameworks of morality that govern early modern Asian life. In particular, he is interested in "moral culture", a term that he uses to describe the pathways, processes and media through which morality and material culture mutually influence one another. Convinced that any morality is grounded, first of all, in people's perception of what it means to be human, his current research applies digital humanity techniques to biographical sources to uncover the longue duree development of the mentalities and discourses concerning the concept of "Man", from the beginning of the Tokugawa period, up to the end of the Meiji period. In doing so, he aims not only to understand the formative processes of discrimination, but also the role of literary form in shaping ideas.
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