When I was asked by the Collegium Invisibile in Lithuania to define my research interests for their website, I wrote "everything". This is true too, and meant to be humble rather than arrogant. I have grown up with the idea that I live in a small country and therefore it is not possible to limit myself to only one thing. With years, I have discovered that knowing something about this and something about that actually enables you to become interdisciplinary and to introduce new ideas and comparative notions to areas where people are not used to them. First of all, it makes you conscious of the limits of the observation languages you use to describe and analyse whatever you are dealing with, and helps you see where the terminology you use starts creating the things you investigate for you. This is useful, and should be taught in universities as soon as possible to all students. That is, if creative thinking is considered necessary.

My dissertation was on Japanese classical literature, and so were my first articles, but soon enough I had started writing on a much broader range of topics. Having had to teach an introduction to world literature over a number of years, and also doing poetry translations from various literatures, I had acquired a rough picture of many literary traditions and their cultural backgrounds as well, which has led me to formulate more general statements on culture, and over the next few years I hope to develop them into a systematic form that could make up a book. Then I have read a certain amount of philosophy, both Western and Asian, and that has allowed me to publish a few pieces on the topic of the latter over the years.

Last but not least, over the last ten years I have also been interested in the processes of modernisation, especially in the countries that were not directly involved in the primary modernising movement of Western Europe and North America, but also not subjugated by a colonial regime. These countries, such as Japan, China, Russia and Turkey, have gone through the modernisation process more quickly and usually developed it as a project, with interesting consequences and also unexpected similarities. For instance, it is interesting to note how a narrative of uniqueness develops in these cultures, and how each of them at a certain stage starts claiming a crucial role in the development of world civilisation. I am sure this topic will keep me occupied along with the others also for some years to come, especially since I've managed to build up a rather good crew of people interested in these issues at the Institute of Humanities in Tallinn University. I will be glad to answer further questions by e-mail.

My fuller and constantly updated research profile can be found here.