Chris Perkins

Dr Chris Perkins completed a joint honours degree in Japanese Language and Contemporary Society with Education Studies at Oxford Brookes University in 2004, with one year spent at Kitakyushu University as an exchange student. After this he worked as a teacher at four schools in Gifu for two years before returning to complete an MSc (distinction) in International Relations at Royal Holloway University of London in 2007, where he went on to complete his PhD thesis entitled ‘National Thinking and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Japan’. He joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in January 2011. His work has appeared in journals including The European Journal of Social Theory, Global Society, Television and New Media, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and Asiatische Studien, as well as in numerous edited collections. His book on media and memory of the left in Japan, The United Red Army on Screen, was published by Palgrave in 2015.

Dr Perkins was recognised for his teaching in the 2012/13 EUSA Teaching Awards, with his Japanese 2B winning "Best Course". He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr Perkins works on history of the Japanese student movement. He has also published on Japanese television, film, and on Japanese studies pedagogy.

Research activity

I am currently working on understanding state responses to the Japanese New Left movement. I am particularly interested in the network of conservative intellectuals involved in the Policy Science Research Group (政策科学研究会) and the impact their activities had on shaping Japanese politics in the 1970s.

I am happy to consider PhD students working on modern Japanese history with a focus on the 1960s and early 1970s.

Postgraduate Teaching

• ASST11075 State, Society and National Identity in Japan after 1989
• ASST11084 East Asian International Relations
• ASST11069 MSc Dissertation

As Undergraduate Course Organiser

• ASST10127 Japanese Language 3 (Year Abroad)
• ASST10131 Contemporary Japanese Cinema
• ASST10112 Modern Japanese Society
• ASST08007 Researching Japan
• ASST08040 Thinking Through Japan
• ASST10139 Radical Japan: Culture, Politics and Protest in Japan's Long 1960s

Other Undergraduate Teaching

• ASST10134 Approaches to Translation from and into Japanese
• ASST08042 Modern East Asian History A