Junko Takeda, an associate professor of history at Maxwell who focuses on European and global histories, has been named the inaugural Daicoff Faculty Scholar. The five-year appointment recognizes Takeda’s contributions as a teacher and mentor, productive researcher, and engaged citizen and leader at the School.

The professorship was created last year by a $160,000 gift from Maxwell alumna Cathy L. Daicoff ’79 MPA, a long-time member of the Maxwell Advisory Board and its current vice chair. The fund is intended to provide support to top faculty members across the School, selected according to overall excellence in teaching and research.

Takeda’s current interests include the history of early modern globalization, state-building and revolutions, migration, and disease. All of her research projects focus on relationships between France and various Asian empires across the early modern period. Her first book, Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean (Johns Hopkins, 2011), explored political dimensions of French trade with the Ottoman Empire. Her second book, The Other Persian Letters: France and Entrepreneurial Imperialism in the Age of Enlightenment, studies commercial, industrial, diplomatic and weapons exchanges between France and Iran in the 18th century. It will appear in spring 2021. She is now working on several other book projects. Avedik: Louis XIV's Armenian Prisoner will tell the story of an Armenian patriarch who had long been rumored to be the Man in the Iron Mask. Global Insects: Silkworms, Statecraft, and Franco-Japanese Trade will study the connected histories of sericulture, arms-dealing, and industrialization. And she has also begun research for a book on the anti-French Siamese Revolution of 1688 that toppled the kingdom of Ayutthaya.

Takeda, who joined Maxwell’s faculty in 2006, is a recipient of the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, the Georges Lurcy Fellowship, the Society for French Historical Studies Research Award, and a visiting research fellowship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. At Maxwell, she has received the O'Hanley Faculty Scholar Award, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Research and Teaching, and Syracuse University’s Meredith Teaching Recognition Award.

Daicoff is a retired managing director at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, where, over a long career, she focused on Asia-Pacific markets, U.S. domestic operations, Canada, and Latin America, among other globally focused positions. She also served as Standard & Poor’s first senior policy officer and director of policy training for Ratings Services, and participated for more than 20 years on the firm’s Analytics Policy Board.

08/30/19