Biography
Masahiro Terada is a visiting professor of environmental humanities at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Kyoto, Japan. His research explores how humanity relates with its surroundings in terms of cultural dimension, especially that of in East Asia, and inquires the distinction between human being, living thing, and thing. From this position, he is currently investigating the concept of the Anthropocene.
His publications include: Geo-Humanities: Becoming of the World, or Human Being, Living Thing, and Thing in the Anthropocene, (Kyoto: Airi Shuppan, 2021, in Japanese); Anthropocene and Asia: Investigation, Critique, and Contribution from the Environmental Humanities Perspective, ed. with Daniel Niles (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2021, in Japanese); Catastrophe and Time: History, Narrative, and Energeia of History (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2018, in Japanese); and What You Are Waiting for on the Top of the Volcano, or Towards a New ‘Scienza Nuova’ of Humanity and Nature (Kyoto: Showado, 2015, in Japanese). He is also the series editor of Narrative of Terra, Terra Narrates (Kyoto: Airi Shuppan, 2019-, in Japanese).
He was a COE researcher of National Museum of History, Japan, a Visiting Researcher of National Ethnology Museum, Japan, and a Visiting Scholar of Max Planck Institute for History of Science, Germany.