Eiko Honda

Eiko is a Research and Teaching Associate in History at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford. Her research uncovers intellectual paradigms that existed in modern Japanese history, but not in its historiography. She does so by elucidating underlying logic behind transdisciplinary works of scientist-polymaths and surrounding non-state knowledge transfers across national and disciplinary borders. These were paradigms where ‘humanistic’ knowledge impacted the articulation of ‘scientific truths’ amidst extraordinary social, ecological, and political changes.

She is currently working on a monograph project, The Emergence of Queer Nature: Minakata Kumagusu and the Making of Microbial Paradigm, 1887-1912. Her latest article “Minakata Kumagusu and the Emergence of Queer Nature: The Civilisation Theory, Buddhist Science and Microbes, 1887-1892” is forthcoming from Modern Asian Studies.

In parallel to her work in intellectual history, she investigates forms of knowledge-making required in the time of climate crisis in collaboration with scholars of other regions, disciplines, and periods. Recent results include 'Undoing the Discipline: History in the Time of Climate Crisis and COVID-19', Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 2020.