Professor of the History of Art at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London, Timon Screech has devoted his career to the study of Japanese art and culture and to the interplay between art and the broader social landscape. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, Tim is the author of some dozen books on the visual culture of the Edo period. Perhaps his best-known work is Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820. More recently, he has introduced and edited the writings of two 18th-century travellers, as, Japan Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Shogun’s Realm, 1775-1796 and Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822. 

His field-defining general study, Obtaining Images: Art, Production and Display in Edo Japan was published in 2012 and issued in paperback in 2017. Tim has just completed two new books, one on the early history of the East India Company and its role in cultural exchange, and also the Oxford History of Japanese Art.

Tim’s upcoming books include The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625 (Oxford University Press), and Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun's City of Edo (UK: Reaktion Books; US: Chicago University Press).

Language spoken: English