Professor Christopher Joby

Biography

Christopher Joby is currently a Research Associate of CTS. He has taught Dutch language, culture, and history at universities in the UK, South Korea, and Poland. His research explores the intersection between the Dutch culture and language and other cultures and languages.

In 2019, he was a Taiwan Fellow. From 2020 to 2022, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, and a grant recipient from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. He has published several articles on the linguistic and cultural history of Taiwan and is currently writing a book on the reception of the Christian Gospel in seventeenth-century Taiwan.” He has also contributed articles to the Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies and the Handbook of Formosan Languages.

Research Interests

The intersection between the Dutch language and cultures and other languages and cultures; the Dutch colonial period in Taiwan; the languages of Taiwan; and pre-colonial or ‘Aboriginal’ Taiwan.

He is currently writing a book on the reception of the Christian Gospel in seventeenth-century Taiwan, which is under contract with Brill. He has published many articles and five books including The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900) (Brill, 2020) and The Dutch Language in Britain (1550-1702) (Brill, 2015).

Education

Chris has bachelor’s degrees from Oxford University (Arabic with Turkish), and Durham University (Combined Studies in Arts). He has a PhD in church history from Durham University (2006), and habilitated in linguistics at AMU Poznan, Poland, in 2020.

Books

• The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900) (Brill, 2020).
• The Dutch Language in Britain (1550-1702) (Brill, 2015).

Articles

• ‘Two approaches by Dutch missionaries to communicating the Gospel in seventeenth-century Taiwan', Mission Studies (forthcoming)
• ‘Food Culture in Pre-Colonial Taiwan’, International Journal of Taiwan Studies (forthcoming). 
• ‘Revisions to the Siraya lexicon based on the original Utrecht Manuscript: A Case Study in Source Data’, Historigraphia Linguistica 48 (2/3) (2021), pp. 177-204. 
• A recently-discovered copy of a translation of the Gospel of St. John in Siraya’, Oceanic Linguistics (59:1/2) (2020), pp. 212-31.

The Dutch Colonial Period in Taiwan; "Aboriginal Taiwan"; The history of Languages in Taiwan; Missionary Linguistics in Taiwan.