Dr Yuri Takahashi

Yuri is lecturer and convener of the Burmese Program at ANU established in 2016.  Awarded Commendation for Excellence in Education 2022 from ANU College of Asia & the Pacific.

Yuri obtained her Masters in Burmese literature from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and worked for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Burmese specialist for seven years, including a three year stay in Yangon from 1991 to 1994.

She is a professional language educator specialized in tertiary education.  After graduating from Meiji University (BA Economics.  Majored in modern Japanese political history), from 1982 she taught Japanese language overseas students at Takushoku University for nine years before her posting to the Japanese Embassy in Myanmar.

Since moving to Australia she returned to language education and research at the University of Sydney, teaching at their Japanese Department for sixteen years, as casual academic and then Associate Lecturer in Japanese.  In 2013 she also led an intensive Burmese course at USYD.  During this period she published many translations / essays on Burmese literature, music, media and culture in Australia, Japan and Myanmar. 

She obtained M. Phil and PhD (Modern Burmese intellectual history) from the University of Sydney.  She has a long-term curiosity about the acceptance of modernity as seen through Burmese literature. Her research for PhD explores the changing narratives of Burmese nationalism through writing a biography of Shwe U Daung, a Burmese author well known as the creator of ‘San Shar the Detective’, an adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories.