With the aim of promoting comparative research in Korean and Japanese history and enhancing the dialogue between historians of Korea and Japan in Europe, the European Forum on Korean-Japanese History was established on 18 March 2012. The Forum is an independent body supported by the National Institute for Korean History. Its initial objective is to organize biennial workshops bringing together historians of Japan and Korea to exchange views on subjects of mutual relevance and interest.
The European Forum functions as a platform where the tangled histories of Korea and Japan are critically debated, common framing concepts are questioned, source materials are reread and untapped archival materials mobilized. As the professional field is still largely defined by national labels – we are historians of Korea and/or Japan – the European Forum probes how these labels as ordering principles that subliminally reproduce contemporary antagonisms in both research and teaching can be overcome. For too long a historiography based on the nation-state has prevented relevant dialogues from occurring. Now, theoretical and methodological developments in historiography allow the writing of history beyond the nation-state and open up new fields of research on multidirectional transnational flows of ideas, goods and people; subalternity, historical agency and the multiplicity of perspectives.
