Dr Chika Tonooka
I am an historian of modern Britain and modern Japan in a global context, with broad interests in international history, global history and intellectual history. I read History (BA) at the University of Cambridge, and undertook an MA at the University of Tokyo before returning to Cambridge where I completed a PhD dissertation entitled ‘Japanese “civilisation” and ideas of progress in Britain, c.1880-1945’. My dissertation was the joint winner of the 2020 Prince Consort & Thirwall Prize and Seeley Medal awarded by the University of Cambridge for the best doctoral dissertation in History. I was born in Tokyo and grew up in London.
Postdoctoral Research Associate/ Associate Research Scholar & Lecturer, PIIRS, Princeton University (2020-22); Course Director, Global History Pathway Module, MSt in History, University of Cambridge (2019); Co-founder of Modern British History Workshop (est. 2020); Member of New York-Cambridge Training Collaboration in Twentieth-Century British History (NYCTC) (2015-2018).
Contact
Tags & Themes
Pembroke College
Cambridge
CB2 1RF
Key publications
Books
Rival Civilisations: The Rise of Japan and Ideas of World Order in Britain (under contract with Princeton University Press).
Articles.
'World history's Eurocentric moment? British internationalism in the age of Asian nationalism, c.1905-1931', Modern Intellectual History 18 (2021), 95-120.
‘Covid-19, Online Workshops, and the Future of Intellectual Exchange’ [With Aled Davies, Andrew Seaton & Jessica White], Rethinking History 25 (2021), 224-241.
'Reverse emulation and the cult of Japanese efficiency in Edwardian Britain', Historical Journal 60 (2017), 95-119.
Book Chapters
‘Reluctant Pioneers: British Anthropologists amongst the Natives of Modern Japan, c.1929-1930’, in L. Carter, F. Foks and P. Harling, eds., Democratising the Discipline: Modern British History Inside and Out (book chapter under contract with University of London Press).
'Meiji Military Reforms', in H.E. Chehabi and David Motadel, eds., Unconquered States: Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age (forthcoming with Oxford University Press).
‘The “International” and “Global” as Locales in International History’ [With Or Rosenboim], Oxford Handbook on History and International Relations (Oxford University Press 2023).