ICREA Research Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
Prof. Rebekah Clements is the Principal Investigator and director of the Aftermath project. She is a cultural historian of Japan, specializing in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), and has published extensively on language, society, and the characteristics of Japanese early modernity, as understood in the broader context of East Asia.
Prof. Clements is the author of A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her articles include “Alternate Attendance Parades in the Japanese Domain of Satsuma, Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Pottery, Power and Foreign Spectacle,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol.32, 2022, pp 135-158; “Brush Talk as the ‘Lingua Franca’ of East Asian Diplomacy in Japanese-Korean Encounters, c.1600-1868” The Historical Journal, vol.62, Issue 2, June 2019, pp.289.309; and “Speaking in Tongues? Daimyo, Zen Monks, and Spoken Chinese in Japan, 1661–1711” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol.76, Issue 3, August 2017, pp. 603-626.
Her co-authored article written with Dr Baihui Duan as part of the Aftermath project, “Fighting for Forests: Protection and Exploitation of Kŏje Island Timber during the East Asian War of 1592 to 1598,” Environmental History 2022, vol.27(3), won a 2023 Vandervort Prize from The Society for Military History.
On the Aftermath project, Prof. Rebekah Clements is working on the history of Korean captives present in Japan following the Imjin War of 1592-1598, examining their integration into the domains where they were settled. She also supervises the doctoral studies of Mr Jaime Gonzalez.
