East Asian Studies PhD – (Ph.D.)

East Asian Studies at Manchester comprises Chinese Studies and Japanese Studies. It has fifteen academic staff led by Professors Ian Reader (Japanese Studies) and Hong Liu (Chinese Studies), and language teaching teams in Chinese and Japanese. Besides PhD programmes of study in Chinese Studies and in Japanese Studies for those who specifically focus on one or other of these cultural areas, East Asian Studies offers the scope for PhDs that focus on the East Asian region, broadly defined (including South-East Asia, especially when related to areas and cultures which use Chinese writing characters), that either transcend specific cultural boundaries or that seek to utilize the academic specialism and guidance of scholars in East Asian Studies to engage with academic topics within the region.

In such contexts East Asian Studies staff can offer postgraduate supervision in a variety of areas related to religion, education, popular culture, art, history, gender studies, identity formation, literature, social dynamics, social and business networks, and medical history and policy, either in terms of specific East Asian cultures or as such topics range across national and cultural boundaries within the wider East Asian context.