Dr Laurence Mann

SFHEA, FRAS, PGCertTLHE, DipABRSM

Senior Lecturer in Japanese & Korean and Director, BrookesEDGE

School of Education, Humanities and Languages

Laurence Mann

Role

Laurence studied Japanese at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a DPhil (No Corrections) in 2017, for research on a set of Shinto liturgies called the Engishiki Norito. His research interests centre on the relationships between form and meaning in texts, particularly poetry and songs. He teaches a range of undergraduate modules in Korean and Japanese languages and cultures at Brookes, as well as modules in languages and translation more generally (see below for a current list). Aside from this, he also retains an affiliation at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, where he has taught since 2017. 

Teaching and supervision

Courses

Modules taught

  • Japanese 1A / B
  • Korean 1A / B
  • Understanding Languages and Translation
  • Japanese Reading & Writing 2 A / B
  • Learning Japanese through J-Pop
  • Learning Korean through K-Pop
  • Language Studies in Japan
  • Japanese 4A 

Supervision

Laurence has supervised and / or assessed postgraduate projects at all levels and across a range of topics, including:
  • Korean and Japanese popular songs
  • Translation (of contemporary Korean-English, Classical Chinese-early modern Japanese) 
  • Multimodality 
  • East Asian Pragmatics
  • Japanese Historical Linguistics

Research

Laurence's research interests began in early Japanese liturgical and poetic texts from the Old Japanese (8th Century, Nara) Period. Since then, his interests have developed to span a broader range across both time and space, but retain a focus on the relationships between form and meaning, particularly in highly oral genres. His most recent publications and projects scope across a wide variety of topics in language, including language education, multimodality and poetic rhetoric in Japonic languages. He also collaborates with researchers in experimental linguistics to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of poetic appreciation (and other topics) in a variety of languages, including Japanese, Korean, Welsh, English and Mongolian. 

Research group membership

  • Faculty Member, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. 
  • Founding Member, ERP Studies for East Asian Languages (with Seoul National, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, University of Inner Mongolia and others). 
  • Member, Popular Music Research Unit, Oxford Brookes University.
  • Member, Europe Japan Research Centre 

Research grants and awards

  • John Fell OUP Research Fund, March 2019
  • Creative Multilingualism Funded Research Project, June 2018
  • British Association of Japanese Studies John Crump Studentship, 2016
  • Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities 2012-15
  • Young Bin Min-KF Fund Grant, 2014
  • University of Oxford Gibbs Prize 2008 

Research projects

  • Poetry, song, heritage: the Poetic Mind (PI) 2019-2020, John Fell Fund
  • Can the music of poetry transcend cultural and linguistic barriers? A cognitive neuroscience investigation (Co-I) 2018-2019, Creative Multilingualism  

Centres and institutes

Groups

Projects

  • Poetry, song, heritage: the Poetic Mind

Publications

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Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
  • Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society

Further details

Other experience

  • External Examiner (University of East Anglia, 2021-present)
  • Tanaka JRF in Japanese, Pembroke College, University of Oxford (2018-2021)
  • College Lecturer in Japanese, Hertford College, University of Oxford (2018)
  • Departmental Lecturer in Japanese, University of Oxford (2017-18)
    •  Nominated for Student Union Teaching Awards (2018)
    •  FPE Exam coordinator
  • Local Education Authority Music Teacher, City and County of Swansea (2016-17)
    • Principal teaching responsibilities: Performance, ensemble musicianship
  • Japanese Language Teacher, various colleges, University of Oxford (2012-16)
  • Academic Translator and Conference Interpreter (2012-present)