Rein Raud

Rein Raud is an Estonian scholar and author. He was born in 1961 in the family of Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both writers for children. He graduated from the Leningrad State University (now called Saint Petersburg State University) in 1985 in Japanese Studies and earned a PhD degree in Literary Theory at the University of Helsinki in 1994. Raud has worked in the Estonian Institute of Humanities (now a part of Tallinn University) and the University of Helsinki, where he is currently a professor in the Department of World Cultures. From 2006 to 2011 Raud served as the first rector of the Tallinn University. In 2011-14 he was the President of the European Association of Japanese Studies.

Raud is an honorary doctor of the University of Latvia and the Vytautas Magnus University.

As a scholar, Raud has published on a wide range of subjects from cultural theory to pre-modern Japanese literature and philosophy, both in English and Estonian. His theoretical project is an effort to combine the semiotics of the Lotman tradition with anthropological and sociological approaches in order to achieve a more holistic understanding of cultural phenomena. His work on Japan has dealt with some of the most important philosophical thinkers, notably Dōgen and Nishida Kitarō.