Tomohito Baji

Tomohito Baji is a historian of political thought, focusing on the intersection between intellectual history and International Relations. He is currently an Associate Professor in the History of Political and Social Thought at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Komaba, Japan. His research interests include imaginations of empire and international order in the early twentieth century, particularly those in Britain, the United States and Japan. He also studies postcolonial ecological thought that developed in the Pacific Islands in the late twentieth century.

His current book project examines the fields of Colonial Policy Studies (Shokumin Seisaku Gaku) and early IR in modern Japan, analysing the works of their architects in a global intellectual history framework.

Baji is the author of The International Thought of Alfred Zimmern: Classicism, Zionism and the Shadow of Commonwealth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), a comprehensive examination into the development of the imperial and international thought of this prominent early twentieth-century IR scholar. His English research articles have appeared in Modern Intellectual History, History of European Ideas and International Affairs. He is also the recipient of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Prize (2022).

Before his tenure at the University of Tokyo, Baji served as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, Japan. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Tokyo and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.