Dr Mark Erdmann

Lecturer, Art History
School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne


Mark K Erdmann is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. Erdmann specializes in Japanese pre-modern architecture, particularly of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the intersection of space, painting, carpentry, and power. His research focuses on castles, warrior elite residences, palaces, as well as the Jesuit mission in Japan and their impact on visual culture. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2016 and Masters from the University of London in 2001. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Azuchi Castle: Oda Nobunaga and the Origins of the Japanese Castle. Erdmann is also a founding core member of the Azuchi Castle Screens Research Network, a group of scholars and artists attempting to discover the fate of a lost painting of Azuchi Castle gifted by Oda Nobunaga to Pope Gregory XIII via the Jesuits in 1585. He is also working on an annotated translation of Shōmei(Elucidation of the Craft), a secret sixteenth-century architectural manual written by Heinouchi Masanobu.

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