Thai studies

Thai Studies is an area of ​​science that deals with the Thai language, population, history and culture of Thailand.

For Thai Studies and researches can be counted, dealing with ethnic groups of the Tai Ausserhalbs of present-day Thailand, for example, the Tai Lue in Yunnan, China and the Shan in Burma.

Requirements

Research projects to be carried out in Thailand, usually require approval by the National Research Council of Thailand ( NRCT ), the National Research Council of Thailand. In field research in national parks or nature reserves is also the approval of the Royal Forest Department (RDP ), the Royal Forest plan sought.

History

Probably the first device that has been actively engaged in the exploration and dissemination of Thai Studies and its findings, the Siam Society ( Siam Society), which was under the auspices of the Thai royal house and is available. The company has an extensive library and publishes the magazine "The Journal of the Siam Society " out.

At the University of Hamburg, there are at the Asia - Africa Institute, a department of Thai Studies. The origins of the hamburger Thai Studies go back to the year 1958. On the initiative of the Japanese studies, Oscar Benl a lectureship in the Thai language at the Chinese seminar set. When building the Thai Studies played in the early years of the lecturer Luang Kirati Kee, who had taught in the 1930s already under Walter Trittel in Berlin Thai, a prominent role. At his side stood a doctorate in law Klaus Wenk, who devoted himself to the study of classical literature and the Thai art.

In 1970, Klaus Wenk was appointed as professor of languages ​​and cultures of mainland Southeast Asia in the newly established Department of Thailand, Burma and Indochina, which he served during the following 22 years. Also from 1970, until his death in 1988, Klaus Rosenberg, which focused in the area of the Thai philology, professor in the department operates.

When in August 1997 died Rosenberg's mother, provisions in his will that her fortune was destined for a Klaus -Rosenberg Foundation. The sole purpose of the Foundation is to send students of the department for study purposes to Thailand or to have Thai students come to Hamburg.

Wenk's successor in 1992, the internationally renowned anthropologist and historian Barend January Terwiel, who had previously taught in Canberra and Munich. Terwiel enriched the field of Thai Studies considerably by the inclusion of the cultures of living outside Thailand Tai peoples (including Shan and Ahom ). After two years of vacancy, the Thai Studies is represented since WS 2009/10 by Volker Grabowsky, who had his habilitation in 1996 at the Hamburg Thai Studies with a thesis on "Population and state in Lan Na ". As part of the Southeast Asia Department, founded in 2005 together with Austronesian and Vietnamistik offers Thai Studies at the BA and MA programs in languages ​​and cultures of Southeast Asia. Cooperation with neighboring compartments at the Asia - Africa Institute opened a variety of cooperation and development possibilities of the subject. The editing, which held to Luang Kee Kiratis death in 1967 initially Ampha Otrakul ( until 1978 ) and then Patcharee Kaspar- Sickermann (until 2009), was recently occupied since the WS 2010/11 by Watcharit Kongpien. In the teaching of the entire spectrum of the subject in language, literature, history and society is covered. The current research interests are the history of Thailand and Laos, as well as the manuscript cultures of Tai. Six doctoral students currently write dissertations in the fields of history, culture and linguistics.

Researchers and scholars of Thai Studies (selection)

  • William J. Gedney
  • Henry Ginsburg (1940-2007), curator of Southeast Asian manuscripts at the British Library
  • Volker Grabowsky, University of Hamburg
  • Klaus Wenk (1927-2006), University of Hamburg
  • David K. Wyatt (1937-2006), Cornell University
Area studies Thai people Shan people List of national parks of Thailand
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