Yuko Tanaka

Biography

Yuko Tanaka holds an M.A. in Letters from Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University and a Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS University of London. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) before joining Nagoya University of Commerce and Business in 2026.
Her research focuses on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, particularly discourses of heresy and orthodoxy in the early Islamic period and the delineation of the boundaries of religious knowledge. Drawing on Arabic primary sources, she examines how religion, intellectual traditions, society, and politics—and the formation of religious identity—have been historically constructed and negotiated within social and political contexts.