Historian Junko Takeda named first Daicoff Faculty Scholar
Junko
Takeda, an associate professor of history at Maxwell who focuses on European
and global histories, has been named the inaugural Daicoff Faculty Scholar. The
five-year appointment recognizes Takeda’s contributions as a teacher and
mentor, productive researcher, and engaged citizen and leader at the School.
The
professorship was created last year by a $160,000 gift from Maxwell alumna Cathy
L. Daicoff ’79 MPA, a long-time member of the Maxwell Advisory Board and its
current vice chair. The fund is intended to provide support to top faculty
members across the School, selected according to overall excellence in teaching
and research.
Takeda’s
current interests include the history of early modern globalization,
state-building and revolutions, migration, and disease. All of her research
projects focus on relationships between France and various Asian empires across the
early modern period. Her first book, Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille
and the Early Modern Mediterranean (Johns
Hopkins, 2011), explored political dimensions of French trade with the Ottoman
Empire. Her second book, The Other Persian Letters: France and Entrepreneurial Imperialism
in the Age of Enlightenment, studies commercial, industrial, diplomatic and
weapons exchanges between France and Iran in the 18th century. It will
appear in spring 2021. She is now working on several other book projects. Avedik:
Louis XIV's Armenian Prisoner will tell the story of an
Armenian patriarch who had long been rumored to be the Man in the Iron Mask. Global
Insects: Silkworms, Statecraft, and Franco-Japanese Trade will study the
connected histories of sericulture, arms-dealing, and industrialization. And
she has also begun research for a book on the anti-French Siamese Revolution of
1688 that toppled the kingdom of Ayutthaya.
Takeda,
who joined Maxwell’s faculty in 2006, is a recipient of the Mellon Dissertation
Fellowship, the Georges Lurcy Fellowship, the Society for French Historical
Studies Research Award, and a visiting research fellowship at the University of
St. Andrews, Scotland. At Maxwell, she has received the O'Hanley Faculty
Scholar Award, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Research and Teaching, and
Syracuse University’s Meredith Teaching Recognition Award.
Daicoff
is a retired managing director at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services,
where, over a long career, she focused on Asia-Pacific markets, U.S. domestic
operations, Canada, and Latin America, among other globally focused positions. She
also served as Standard & Poor’s first senior policy officer and director
of policy training for Ratings Services, and participated for more than 20
years on the firm’s Analytics Policy Board.
08/30/19