Professor Yutaka Yoshida FBA
- Fellow type
- International Fellow
- Year elected
- 2014
- Sections
- Africa, Asia and the Middle East
Summary
Yutaka Yoshida has been Professor of Linguistics at the Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan since 2006, when he moved from Kobe City University, where he had taught for twenty years. He spent one year during 1981-82 at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, under the supervision of Professor N. Sims-Williams. He received the World Book Award of Iran in February 2014 for his book on Sogdian arts and language. His main interest is Sogdian and other Iranian languages once spoken along the Silk Road. He is well known as a decipherer of the Sogdian materials recently discovered in China and has published all the Sogdian texts preserved in Japan, among which is one brand on two pieces of sandalwood imported to Japan some 1300 years ago. He is uniquely distinguished among Iranianists for his research on Middle Iranian words transcribed in Chinese characters. Another important contribution to Central Asian studies is his recent discovery of as many as ten Chinese Manichaean silk paintings preserved in Japan, the likenesses of which have never been encountered so far.
Current post
Professor of Central Asian Studies, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University
Publications
Other Fellows of the British Academy
Professor Lynn Meskell FBA
Lynn Meskell FBA has published extensively on the archaeology of Egypt and Turkey; heritage violence in South Africa, India and the Middle East; the histories of colonialism, Cold War conflicts and espionage; and politics and ethics.
Professor Samuel Lieu FBA
History of religions, especially of Manichaeism and Christianity, in Central Asia and China; history of Late Roman and Early Byzantine Near East; history of the Silk Road
Professor Jane Duckett FBA
Contemporary Chinese government and politics; Chinese health and social policy, poverty and inequality; comparative politics
