Martin Kern

Martin Kern is a German-American sinologist, specializing in Chinese literature, poetry, literary thought, philology, and historiography. He served as co-editor of the sinological journal T'oung Pao from 2009 through 2024.

Biography Martin Kern was born in Germany in 1962, where he attended school. He began study at the University of Cologne in 1985, before taking several years to study as an exchange student at Peking University. He returned to Cologne, where received his M.A. in 1992 and his Ph.D. (in sinology, German literature, and art history) four years later.

After receiving his doctorate, Kern briefly taught as a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington and as an assistant professor at Columbia University. In 2000, he became an assistant professor of Chinese Literature at Princeton University. He advanced to an associate professorship in 2003, and a full professorship in 2005. In 2017, he became the founding director of the International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.

Kern is a member of the American Philosophical Society. He was vice president of the American Oriental Society in 2022–2023 and president in 2023–2024. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 for a monograph project on the early history of Chinese poetry. He served as co-editor of the sinological journal T'oung Pao from 2009 through 2024.