Traditional East Asia MPhil

Libraries and museums

Oxford's libraries preserve one of the largest and most important collections on materials on East Asia to be found in the western world. For Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, the Bodleian Chinese Library in the Dickson Poon University of Oxford China Centre, the Bodleian Japanese Library in the Nissan Institute, and the 'Window on Korea' Library in the Nizami Ganjavi Library at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies are most useful, together with the Eastern Art Library in the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library. 

For Chinese, there is also the Dickson Poon University of Oxford China Centre Building which has a dedicated library with study carrels and a reading room. The K B Chen China Centre Library holds books from the Bodleian Library's China Collection. The Bodleian Library has been collecting books in Chinese and on China since the early seventeenth century and presently contains one of the largest collections in Europe.

For Korean, the ‘Window on Korea’ project - sponsored by the National Library of Korea - provided the Bodleian Library with around 4,000 volumes in 2012 to augment the 36,000 volumes already in the collection and provides 200 volumes per year until 2022. The National Library of Korea also provided funding to help create a Korean Studies Library with an audio-visual seminar room at the Nizami Ganjavi Library. This provides the opportunity to expand the collection as well as bringing all necessary Korean materials (reference, newspapers, teaching, audio visual and research materials) into one location at the Oriental Institute.

The Weston Library houses the Korean collection of pre-modern books and manuscripts and the Bodleian intranet system maintains subscriptions to most of the key online databases, eg DBpia, KISS, KRpia and KSI e-book. The Korean collection possesses the Bishop Mark Trollope Collection (from the nineteenth century and earlier), the Monsignor Richard Rutt Collection (mid to late twentieth century), and the earliest translations of the New Testament into Korean by John Ross in the 1880s.

For Japanese, the Nissan Institute houses the Bodleian Japanese Library, the University’s research collection of Japanese books. The library was constructed in 1993 and contains certain rare items. The first known accession of Japanese printed material was three volumes printed by Hon’ami Kōetsu’s press at Saga, Kyoto, c.1608-15. There are also rare printed volumes produced by the Jesuit press in Japan (Kirishitan-ban) before they were expelled in 1614 as well as log books by William Adams (1564-1620), the first Englishman known to have visited Japan. The collection grew with Western-language publications on Japan from the seventeenth century onwards, and as an active research library serving the Oxford community, there is also an extensive and expanding modern collection.

There is also the Research Centre for Japanese Language and Linguistics in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, which functions as an umbrella for research activities related to Japanese language and linguistics through the University. The centre serves as a forum for publicising teaching, lectures, seminars, and other activities of interest to Japanese linguistics, and as a point of access to information for prospective graduate students interested in Japanese language and linguistics.

Faculty resources

Students have access to the University's centrally provided electronic resources, the Faculty's IT Officer, and other bibliographic, archive or material sources as appropriate to the topic. There is a computing room for the use of graduate students in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as a common room where tea and coffee are available and staff and students can meet.

Oxford colleges

Oxford’s colleges provide support, facilities and membership of a friendly and stimulating academic community. All colleges provide library and IT facilities, welfare support, and sports and social events. Although your academic studies will be directed by the faculty, colleges can be a valuable source of support. Please check the application guide for information about colleges.

Improving access to graduate study

The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is taking part in initiatives to improve the selection procedure for graduate applications, to ensure that all candidates are evaluated fairly.

Socio-economic data (where it has been provided in the application form) will be used as part of an initiative to contextualise applications at the different stages of the selection process. 

When considering this course, please note:

Mastering the ability to handwrite in Korean, Japanese and Chinese has been identified as a competence standard for an assessment for an optional component of this course. This means that students will be required to produce handwritten work for assessment and it will not be possible to complete the assessment for that optional component in an alternative format. 

If you are interested in this course and your personal circumstances mean that handwriting may present a challenge, please contact the Faculty. 

Can I submit one 4,000 word piece of written work instead of two 2,000 word pieces?

Not for our courses. We ask for two pieces which will show a range of ability rather than two highly similar pieces and you may find it useful to check the criteria your written work will be assessed for when choosing your samples. Your samples can be extracts from longer pieces of work and if this is the case, please indicate this on a cover page, or at the beginning of each piece of work.

What should I submit to show my proficiency in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese?

If you are not a native speaker in one of these languages, your level of proficiency must be supported by one of the standardised proficiency tests accepted by the faculty. Please contact us to check what you need to provide.

Where can I find out about funding available for applicants?

Your best guide to funding opportunities will always be the University's admissions webpages. We recommend that you use the Fees, funding and scholarship search which is a useful tool for finding any funding that you may be eligible to apply for.

If you submit your application by the January deadline you will automatically be considered for the majority of Oxford scholarships. There’s no separate scholarship application process or extra supporting documentation required for funding. Based on the information supplied in your graduate application, you will be automatically considered for scholarships where you meet the eligibility criteria with most scholarships using academic merit and/or potential as the basis on which award decisions are made.

However, please note, in addition to submitting an application form for your chosen course, the scholarships listed on the following page also require an additional application to be considered for them.