Prior to leading MMA, Dr. Batts worked as a postdoctoral researcher on Professor Rebekah Clements’ European Research Council Starting Grant Project “Aftermath of the East Asian War of 1592–98,” dedicated to interrogating the demographic, technological, and environmental legacy of the Imjin War across Korea, China, and Japan. His work as part of the Aftermath project explored how daimyo assembly and mobilisation for the invasion of Korea contributed to domestic socialisation and governance, arguing that the failed effort to conquer Korea furthered the domestic subjugation of Japan. With Dr. Barend Noordam, he also co-organized the international conference “Mastery of Materialities: Resources and Technology in Post-Imjin War East Asia (1598-1650),” held on 4-5 September 2023 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

Dr. Batts’ first monograph, Pacific Overtures: Tokugawa Outreach to Habsburg Spain, 1600–1625, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. The work explores Tokugawa Japan’s attempts to establish direct, trans-Pacific trade with Spanish America in the early seventeenth century, and Habsburg Spain’s efforts to stymie the endeavor across three continents. Their clash facilitates a study of how early modern polities confronted geographical reality, disparate commercial priorities, and competing diplomatic imaginations. Eschewing familiar accounts juxtaposing Japan’s insularity against Spain’s Catholic expansion, Pacific Overtures investigates the very real impediments to sustaining relations across vast distances, and challenges readers to consider the costs, risks, and consequences of mounting such an effort.

Dr. Batts obtained his PhD from Columbia University in 2017 and continued his research for two years as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo. From 2019-2022 he worked as a Research Associate in Japanese Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge.