Research Fellow from Japan

German Studies Scholar Naomi Miyatani Has Research Fellowship from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for Research at Freie Universität Berlin. The German studies scholar Naomi Miyatani has received a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which she will be using this year to do research at Freie Universität Berlin. A professor of German literature at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, Japan, Miyatani will be working from April to August 2016 on a project that is headed by Hijiya-Kirschnereit and deals with the ideas of Hamann, Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt about language. The main focus of the project is on comparative issues in comparison with Japanese concepts of language. In addition, she will be working on a new translation of Johann Gottfried Herder's "Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache" (Discourse on the Origin of Language) into Japanese. Naomi Miyatani studied theology and German literature at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, one of the oldest and most prestigious private universities in Japan, where she also completed her doctorate. She has taught and done research at the University of Tuebingen in Germany and worked as a lecturer at the University of Leio and Tokyo University.