Jay Lewis Appointed Professor of Korean History

Wolfson College wishes to congratulate Governing Body Fellow James “Jay” Lewis on his appointment to a full professorship by the University of Oxford.

A distinguished scholar of Northeast Asia, Professor Lewis specialises in the histories of Korea and Japan from approximately 1400 to 1850. His research spans diplomacy, trade, and conflict, and engages with broader themes in world history including environment, epidemiology, urbanisation, development, and global trade.

At Oxford, Professor Lewis teaches across undergraduate programmes in Japanese and Chinese, and postgraduate degrees in Korean, Japanese, and East Asian studies. His cross-regional, comparative approach has made a significant contribution to understanding the complexities of pre-modern East Asia.

Professor Lewis is currently co-editing a volume on the aftermath of the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s, due to be published by Brill in 2026. He is also working on annotated translations of two early eighteenth-century texts, the Kōrin teisei (1728) and the Haeyurok (1719), as well as continuing to work on a monograph on Korea’s economic history from 1400 to 1900.

You can find out more about Jay’s research on the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies website.