Dr Pia Maria Jolliffe FRHistS
Research Fellow, Member of the Las Casas Institute
Dr Pia Jolliffe is a historian of Japan with a particular interest in historical anthropology, children and women’s experiences of the transition from sixteenth to seventeenth century Japan, Buddhist temples as places of memory, and the history Christianity in Japan. Her academic background is a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford, a DESS in Asian Studies from the University of Geneva and a Master’s in Japanese Studies from the University of Vienna.
Current projects:
- a monograph on girls, communities and civil war Japan (ca. 1570s until 1630s). Based on written sources as well as material culture, oral legends and songs, my research focuses on the case study of the girls and young women of Toyotomi Hidetsugu’s household whose individual lives were intimately related to the political conflicts of the late Sengoku and early Edo periods (ca.1570s until 1630s). My study highlights the role of Buddhist temples and communities in preserving and transmitting the records of these girls’ lives. I argue that viewing the transition from sixteenth to the seventeenth century Japan ‘through’ these girls and young women draws our attention to individuals and communities who lost their lives and livelihoods during Japan’s “re-unification” process and thus to alternative histories of the period.
- a co-edited volume on religion, translation and transnational relations between Japan and Early Modern Europe (with Katja Triplett and Orii Yoshimi)
Pia Jolliffe teaches tutorials and lecture courses in early modern Japanese history. In 2022 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and achieved Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).
Publications
Books:
(forthcoming) Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. Stuttgart: J.M. Metzler (co-editors Katja Triplett and Orii Yoshimi);
2018 Southeast Asian Education in Modern History: Schools, Manipulation, and Contest. London: Routledge (co-editor Thomas Richard Bruce);
2018 Prisons and Forced Labour in Japan. The Colonization of Hokkaido, 1881-1894. London: Routledge;
2016 Learning, Migration and Intergenerational Relations. The Karen and the Gift of Education. London: Palgrave Macmillian;
2016 Gefängnisse und Zwangsarbeit auf der japanischen Nordinsel Hokkaido. Vienna: LIT Verlag.
Articles, book chapters:
JAPANESE STUDIES
(forthcoming) “Childhood in Premodern Japanese Religion” in Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press (with Or Porath)
(forthcoming) ‘”This Iaponian Palme-tree of Christian Fortitude” – Jesuit letters from Japan and the English (Counter-) Reformation’, in Katja Triplett, Yoshimi Orii and Pia Jolliffe eds. Japan in the Early Modern World. Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations. Stuttgart: J.M. Metzler
2023 ‘Naughty, bold, and blessed: Sixteenth-century Japanese children’s voices mediated in the writings of Luís Fróis’ Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 16, no. 2, 211-228;
2023 ‘Potato Puppet Theater/Beating the Beauties: A Seventeenth-Century Japanese Picture Book for Children’, with Keller Kimbrough, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 16, no. 2, 197-210;
2023 book review: ‘Monsters, Animals, and other Worlds. A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales. Keller Kimbrough and Shirane Haruo, Columbia University Press, New York, 2018, pp. 443’, in Japan Forum ;
2022 ‘Die Tensho-Mission: Beginn einer schwierigen transnationalen Beziehung.’ In: Bernhard Scheid, Religion-in-Japan: Ein digitales Handbuch. Vienna: University of Vienna;
2021 ‘Japanese Woodblock Prints and the Brady Collection’, Christ Church Library Newsletter, Volume 12, Issues 2-3, 2020-21, 15-18;
2021 ‘Two Examples of Catalogued Japanese Prints in the Brady Collection’, with Kiyoko Hanaoka, Christ Church Library Newsletter, Volume 12, Issues 2-3, 2020-21, 18-19;
2021 ‘Jesuit translation practices in sixteenth-century Japan, Sanctos no gosagueo no uchi nuqigaqi and Luis de Granada’, with Alessandro Bianchi, in Jieun Kiaer et al Missionary Translators: Translations of Christian Texts in East Asia. London: Routledge;
2020 ‘Forced Labour in Imperial Japan’s First Colony: Hokkaido’ The Asia-Pacific Journal. Japan Focus. Vol. 18, Issue 2, Number 6;
2020 ‘Sacred images made to be trampled on: kami fumi-e from Japan’, with Mahli Knutson, British Library Asian and African Studies Blog (31 January 2020);
2019 ‘We are now learning the language like little children”: Learning within the context of the early modern Jesuit mission to Japan’ Annals of Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Nr. 1/2019, 110-124;
2018 ‘Faith in Medicine. The Life of Nagai Takashi’ The Catholic Medical Quarterly. Vol. 68/4, 12-13;
2018 ‘Wirtschaftliche Tätigkeiten und soziale Wahrnehmungen der Natur im Kontext der Kolonialisierung von Ezo/Hokkaido’ (Economic activities and social perceptions of nature within the context of the colonization of Ezo/Hokkaido) Minikomi – Informationen des Akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan Nr 87, 45-52;
2005 ‘Blurring the boundaries: prisons and settler society in Hokkaido’, International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter 39, 8;
2003 ‘Translating Academic Research to the Public’, with Brigitte Steger, Anthropology News 44/3, 22-23;
2003 ‘Über hikikomori sprechen. Unterschiedliche Darstellungsweisen im öffentlichen Diskurs’ Minikomi – Informationen des akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan 66, 28-34;
2002 ‘Joko-san, tanoko und maika. Zur Wechselwirkung von Technologie und geschlechtlich segregiertem Arbeitsmarkt in Japan’ Minikomi Informationen des akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan 65, 13-18;
2001 ‘One Team. One Scarf. One Neck? Strategischer Körpereinsatz bei der Tokyo Motor Show’, with Sigrid Willibald, Minikomi – Informationen des akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan 62, 35-38.
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
2020 ‘The Integration of Syrian Asylum Seekers in Austria in Light of Catholic Social Teaching’, in Leonardo Schiocchet, Christine Nölle-Karimi and Monika Mokre (eds) Agency and Tutelage in Forced Migration, ROR-n Plattform 2(1), Vienna: ROR-n, Austrian Academy of Science, 196-200;
2019 ‘Ageing and Fertility: Legal and Ethical Perspectives’, with William Jolliffe, in Andelka M Phillips, Thana C de Campos and Jonathan Herring (eds) Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 264-274;
2018 ‘Honouring the elders: The common good among Karen communities – a multi-sited ethnography’, with Shirley Worland, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 29/2, 158-170;
2018 ‘Child Migration to the UK. Hopes and Realities’, with Samuel Burke, in Ben Ryan (ed) Fortress Britain? Ethical Approaches to Immigration Policy for a Post-Brexit Britain, London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 134-153;
2017 ‘Thomas Linacre – Humanist, Scholar, Physician and Priest’ Catholic Medical Quarterly 67/3, 17-18;
2017 ‘Participatory research methods with children and adolescents of the Karen people in the highlands of Chiang Mai – a research report’ The Vienna Psychoanalyst (22 March 2017);
2017 ‘Karen youth transitions at the Thai-Myanmar border’ Journal of Youth Studies 20/10, 1313-1327;
2017 ‘Book Review- Researching the Lifecourse: Critical Reflections from the Social Sciences edited by Nancy Worth and Irene Hardill’ Journal of Population Ageing 10/1, 101-104;
2016 ‘Intergenerational relations and rural development among the Karen in Northern Thailand’ International Journal on Ageing in Developing Countries, 1 / 2, 143-157;
2016 ‘Night-time and refugees. Evidence from the Thai-Myanmar border’ Journal of Refugee Studies 29/1, 1-18;
2016 ‘Integration of Syrian asylum seekers and refugees in Austria: the role of education and skills’ NoRRAG, 149-150;
2016 ‘Myanmar’s political transition and educational aspirations of refugees in Thailand’ NoRRAG, 122-123;
2009 Conceptualising and Measuring Children’s Time Use: A Technical Review for Young Lives, with Virginia Morrow and Martin Woodhead, Young Lives Technical Note 14, Oxford: Young Lives;
2008 Early Childhood Transitions Research: A Review of Concepts, Theory, and Practice, with Gina Crivello and Martin Woodhead, Working Papers in Early Childhood Development 48, The Netherlands: Bernard van Leer Foundation;
2008 ‘Sleeping as a Refuge? Embodied Vulnerability and Corporeal Security during Refugees’ Sleep at the Thai-Burma Border’, in Lodewijk Brunt and Brigitte Steger (eds) Worlds of Sleep, Berlin: Frank and Timme, 193- 210;
2007 ‘Into the jungle of bureaucracy: negotiating access to camps at the Thai-Burma border’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 26/3, 51-60;
2006 In the absence of the humanitarian gaze: refugee camps after dark, New Issues in Refugee Research, Policy Development and Evaluation Service, Geneva: UNHCR (Research Paper; 137).