Faculty of Arts awards honorary doctorates

Professor Robert Darnton is an influential historian at Harvard University. His interdisciplinary approach to explaining human thinking in all its diversity has renewed the way we look at historical epochs, especially 18th-century France. By studying how thinking in previous eras was depicted in folk tales, best-sellers and banned books, he has widened historical research by exploring some of its anthropological and cultural-historical aspects. Until last summer, Darnton was the chief librarian at the Harvard Library, the world’s leading university library. Darnton is a book historian. He also does wide-ranging work to improve access to knowledge and is one of the founders of the Digital Public Library of America.

Hiroshi Maruyama is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Muroran Institute of Technology in Hokkaido and an eminent international expert on aboriginal peoples, human rights and the environment. He has been especially active in the struggle of aboriginal peoples and minorities to attain social justice with regard to environmental issues and their efforts to conserve and revitalise their cultures. Maruyama is internationally known for his research into Japanese government policy towards the Ainu people and for his comparative research into the Ainu and Sami which he has carried out in both Japan and in the Nordic countries. Among other things, he has done research into Sami rights as an aboriginal people and ongoing mining-related conflicts in traditional Sami areas in northern Sweden.