Imperial China
Nomadic regimes
Comparative empire studies
Multilingualism and translation
Linguistic landscapes
Global Mongol legacy
Global Middle Ages
Material culture
Email: Johannes.Lotze@mail.huji.ac.il
Personal website: Johannes Lotze
Current Projects
‘The Multilingual Imperial Tradition in China: Tracing a Hidden History’
Curriculum Vitae:
Johannes S. Lotze is a Buber post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), member of ‘The Wall: People and Ecology in Medieval Mongolia and China’ (ERC-funded project), and winner of the inaugural 2018 Bayly Prize of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has been a Teaching Fellow in Medieval Chinese History and the Global Middle Ages at the University of Birmingham (2018–2020). Having studied and taught in four countries (Britain, Germany, China, Israel), Johannes holds a PhD in Chinese Studies (University of Manchester, 2017) and a MA in History/Chinese Studies (Freie Universität Berlin, 2012). From 2018–2021, he has been the main curator of the exhibition ‘Qing: China’s Multilingual Empire’ at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Johannes is a historian of East Asia with a focus on the nature and impact of ‘non-Chinese’ empires in ‘China’; on sedentary/nomadic cooperation and conflict; and specifically on the Mongols and their predecessors.
Fellowships and Grants
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2012-2015: President’s Doctoral Scholar Award, University of Manchester
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2019: Awarded Fellowship of the UK Higher Education Academy
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2020-2022: Post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ERC project ‘The Wall: People and Ecology in Medieval Mongolia and China,’ led by Professor Gideon Shelach-Lavi
Prizes
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2018: Winner of the inaugural Bayly Prize of the Royal Asiatic Society for best PhD thesis in the East Asia field
Education
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2012: Magister (MA) degree in History / Chinese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin
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2017: PhD degree in History / Chinese Studies at University of Manchester
Publications
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Storozum, Michael, Dan Golan, Ido Wachtel, Zhidong Zhang, Johannes S. Lotze, and Gideon Shelach-Lavi, ‘Mapping the Medieval Wall System of China and Mongolia: A Multi-Method Approach,’ Land 10 (2021)
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Lotze, Johannes S. Review of Roxann Prazniak (2019), Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art, The Journal of Asian Studies 79:2 (2020), pp. 479–481.
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Costaguta, Lorenzo, and Johannes S. Lotze, ‘Multilingualism and Transnationalism in the Study of Socialist Movements: A Letter from Friedrich A. Sorge to Karl Marx,’ Rivista di Studi Americani 31 (2020), pp. 227–252.
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Lotze, Johannes S. ‘Report on the Chinese Collection of the John Rylands Library, Manchester’ (2019). Published by the John Rylands Library / University of Manchester.
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Lotze, Johannes S. Review of M. Szonyi (2017), The Art of Being Governed, European Review of History, 26:6 (2019), pp. 1046–1048.
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Lotze, Johannes S. (2017). ‘Translation of Empire: Mongol Legacy, Language Policy, and the Early Ming World Order, 1368-1453.’ PhD Thesis, University of Manchester.
Presentations
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24 March 2022: ‘Language Contact and Conflict,’ delivered at Association for Asian Studies conference 2022, Honolulu (in-person), panel ‘The Great Chinggisid Crisis’, organised by Johannes S. Lotze.
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2 November 2021: ‘Qing: China’s Multilingual Empire,’ delivered online at Manchester China Institute (MCI) to mark the launch of the eponymous exhibition at the John Rylands Library (curated by Johannes S. Lotze and Julianne Simpson).
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22 March 2021: ‘Multilingual Empires,’ delivered at Association for Asian Studies conference 2021, Seattle (online), panel ‘Trajectories of Multilingualism/Translation’, organised/chaired by Johannes S. Lotze.
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20 January 2021: ‘Great Walls and Linguistic Barriers: Nomadic Regimes as Catalysts of Language Study in the Chinese World,’ Asian Studies departmental seminar of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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14 June 2019: ‘Inside or Outside the Empire? Language Policies in the Yuan-Ming-Qing Transition’: delivered at Nordic Association for China Studies conference, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway.
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5 November 2018: ‘The Significance of Multilingualism in Middle and Late Imperial China, or: 元明清時期多語制的意義 [Yuan-Ming-Qing shiqi duoyuzhi de yiyi]’: invited bilingual paper, delivered at University of Glasgow, Confucius Institute.
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15 June 2018: ‘Multilingual Objects: Material Culture as Evidence of Ming China’s Global Engagement’: delivered at the international workshop ‘Chinese Objects and their Lives’ at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), Paris.
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18 April 2018: ‘The Jesuits and the Four Barbarians (Siyi 四夷) in Seventeenth Century China’: delivered publicly for the research project ‘East Asian Uses of the European Past’ at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
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9 September 2017: ‘Monolingual Translators? Translation as Collaboration in Early Ming China’: paper delivered at international workshop ‘Translation and Translators in East Asia,’ University of Oxford.