Rotem Kowner

Rotem Kowner (Hebrew: רותם קובנר; born 11 July 1960) is an Israeli historian and psychologist specializing in modern Japanese history, the Russo-Japanese War, the history of race and racism in East Asia, and Jewish communities in Asia. He is a full professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.

Early life

Rotem Kowner was born in Mikhmoret and lived his early years in the Kibbutz of Ma'ayan Tzvi. At the age of three, his family moved to Haifa, where he grew up and went to the Hebrew Reali School. Upon graduation, he entered the Israeli Navy and subsequently served as an officer on a missile boat.

Academic career

After studying East Asian studies and psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Kowner spent a year at the Free University of Berlin before pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, where he earned his Ph.D. He subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University and at the Hebrew University.

In 1998, Kowner joined the University of Haifa as a senior lecturer and was promoted to professor in 2004. He was the main founder of the university's Department of Asian Studies and served as its first head.

Much of Kowner's early scholarship focused on the Russo-Japanese War, examining its military, political and cultural significance, as well as its regional and global repercussions. He organized international conferences to mark the war's centenary, edited several collaborative volumes on the subject, and published numerous books and articles, thereby helping to restore the conflict to a central place in modern historiography.