Dr Alexander Rotard

Profile

I am a modern historian of Japan and Korea focussing on the colonisation of Korea by Japan in the early twentieth century. My research examines Japanese imperial discourses, how these discourses shaped international understandings of Japan’s imperialist agenda on the Korean peninsula and the legacy of these discourses in historical and contemporary Japan-Korea relations.

I received my undergraduate degree in Japanese and French from The University of Leeds (2011). I then completed an MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2015). Upon graduating from LSE, I was awarded a full scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to pursue a PhD in Japanese & Korean modern history at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. I wrote my thesis in Japanese on the role of The Japan Times in the international justification of the colonisation of Korea. I was awarded my PhD in March 2023.

I joined The University of Leeds as a lecturer in Japanese Studies in 2025. I currently teach and manage modules: Japan’s International Relations, Foundations of East Asia and Modern Japan.

Research interests

My current research examines the Korean ‘other’ in Japanese imperialist discourse and its role in shaping Western understandings of Japan and Japanese foreign policy in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Focussing on the role of The Japan Times and The Seoul Press, it aims to clarify how the ‘othering’ of Korea in Japanese English-language propaganda was essential to both the shaping of Western images of ‘modern’ Japan and the justification of Japanese imperialist expansion in Korea.

My previous research, written in both English and Japanese, has demonstrated The Japan Times’ critical role as a Japanese government propaganda organ during the Meiji period and has clarified the paper’s instrumentality in the nineteenth-twentieth century Anglo-Japanese rapprochement. I have also published research on settler identity and colonial violence in French colonial Algeria.

I would be delighted to collaborate with postgraduate students and fellow researchers who are interested in exploring the history and enduring legacies of imperialism in East Asia and beyond across the fields of history, social sciences, anthropology and international relations. I am particularly interested in the following themes:

• Race and nation in imperialism
• Influence and legacies of imperial propaganda
• Imperial violence and suffering
• Imperial identities
• Settler colonialism

Qualifications

• PhD in Modern Japanese & Korean History, Hitotsubashi University
• MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, London School of Economics and Political Science
• B.A (Joint Hons) in Japanese & French, The University of Leeds

Professional memberships

• Association for Asian Studies
• European Association for Japanese Studies
• 朝鮮史研究会 (Chosen Shi Kenkyukai)

Student education