Origins & Early Life

Alexander Vladimirovich Vovin (Russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France. He was known for his research on East Asian languages. His main interest was in Japanese, but he studied many other languages and families, including Korean, Ainu, Tibetan, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic. Vovin earned his M.A.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

in structural and applied linguistics from the Saint Petersburg State University in 1983, and his Ph.D. in historical Japanese linguistics and premodern Japanese literature from the same university in 1987, with a doctoral dissertation on the Hamamatsu Chūnagon Monogatari (ca. 1056). Vovin served as a Junior Researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Studies from 1987–1990.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

However, because he was unable to get permission to visit Japan and other East Asian countries from the Soviet government, he moved to the United States in 1990. There, he held positions as assistant professor of Japanese at the University of Michigan (1990–1994), assistant professor...

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