Ferran de Vargas

Dr Ferran de Vargas is a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Asian Studies. He completed a master's degree in Chinese and Japanese Studies at Open University of Catalonia (Special Award), and a PhD in Intercultural Studies at Autonomous University of Barcelona (Special Prize) as an FI Grant holder (Generalitat de Catalunya-European Social Fund), with a dissertation about the intersection between political ideologies and cultural productions in postwar Japan. Then he became a Juan de la Cierva-Formación postdoctoral fellow (Spanish Government) at Open University of Catalonia (ALTER research team).

Additionally, he has conducted research stays at Kobe University, Japan (JASSO grant holder, Japanese Government) and the Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute, Kansai (Japan Foundation Program for Specialists in Cultural and Academic Fields).

Dr De Vargas's work has appeared in journals such as positions: asia critique, Modern Asian Studies, Japan Forum, Film-Philosophy, The Sixties and Arts, as well as in several edited collections. His book Izquierda y revolución. Una historia política del Japón de posguerra (1945-1972), about the political history of postwar Japan, was published by Edicions Bellaterra (Autonomous University of Barcelona) in 2020.

Dr De Vargas's main research interest is the study of political ideologies, democratic processes, and aesthetic movements in East Asia, with a special focus on transwar Japan. He has been researching left-wing movements, Marxist theory, and the intersection of politics with cultural productions such as cinema in Japan. He is currently working along two main research lines: Japanese left-wing theories of fascism, and the conversion of left-wing intellectuals into right-wing ideologists in 1960s and 1970s Japan.