Floris van Swet

Floris van Swet is a historian of early modern Japan. His PhD dissertation, Finding a Place: Rōnin Identity in the Tokugawa Period, explores the disjuncture between discourses on rōnin and their lived experiences during the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), his work demonstrates that most rōnin were in fact neither ‘masterless’ nor ‘samurai.’ Rather, they formed an influential and diverse demographic; not outsiders, but intimately involved in, and tied up with, the evolution of the early modern Japanese state and society.

Education:

PhD History and East Asian Languages, Harvard University, 2019

MA Japanese Studies, SOAS University of London, 2011

BA Japanese Studies with Russian, University of Sheffield, 201

BSc Sociology, Culture and New Media, University of Surrey, 2005