Jay Lewis

As a specialist on Northeast Asia (ca. 1400 to 1850), James B. (“Jay”) Lewis researches the histories of both Korea and Japan and teaches for undergraduate degrees in Japanese and Chinese and post-graduate degrees in Korean, Japanese, and East Asia. 

Lewis’s interests range across regional interaction (trade, diplomacy, and war) and comparative national histories (economy, identity, and statecraft) and link to concerns of world history (environment, epidemiology, urbanisation, development, and global trade). He is co-editing a volume of papers on the aftermath of the Japanese invasion of Korea (1590s) to appear from Brill in 2026, working on translations of the Kōrin teisei (1728) to be published from Brill with the Haeyurok (1719), and continuing his work on a monograph on the economic history of Korea (1400-1900).