Wolfgang Behr (born 1965 in Göttingen, FRG), read Sinology, Slavic Studies, Indo-European and Comparative Linguistics and Sociology in Frankfurt/Main, Shenyang, Changchun and Moscow. He receied his M.A. in 1991 with a thesis on Sanskrit-Chinese lexicography, his Ph.D. in 1997 with a dissertation on "Rhyming Bronze Inscriptions and the Origins of Chinese End-Rhyme Versificaton", and his Habilitation in 2008 on "Phonological and Morphological Studies in Early Chinese History of Thought and Culture". Between 1991–1997 he was Teaching and Research Assistant at J.W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M., Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, in 1998, Research Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Uppsala in 2005, and University Lecturer (Akademischer Rat) at Ruhr-University Bochum 1998–2008. Since September 2008 he is Professor at UZH. He held visting professorships in Hong Kong in 2014 (at Chinese University) and in 2017 (at The Jao Tsung-i Academy) and was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at Kyôto University in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022 he served as Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of UZH. 2022 Senior Visiting Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Kyôto. Director IAOS 2023–

• Old Chinese phonology, morphology, etymology & paleography
• Sino-Tibetan linguistics; external contacts of Old and Middle Chinese
• Premodern Chinese dialectology
• History of Chinese philology; epistemological foundations of historical linguistics in China, conceptual and cultural history, Philosophy of language beyond Standard Average European
• Pre-imperial Chinese archaeology & history; Early Chinese historiography
• Sanskrit-Chinese translation & lexicography
• Modern Chinese translation of Western experimental literature, translatability, puns, metrics
• Grammatology of complex non-alphabetic writing-systems

See for a periodically updated list http://uzh.academia.edu/WolfgangBehr/ or query for "Wolfgang Behr" on zenodo.org.

Recent Publications

• “Tracing variation in Old Chinese: what, if anything, was “yayan 雅言”?, Journal of Chinese Linguis­tics 51.2 (2023): 287-348.

• (with R. Suter & P. Lukicheva, eds.), Vision and Visuality in Buddhism and Beyond, special issue of Asiatische Studien 74.4, 2021, pp. 753–1101.

• “Inscription Placement, Ineffability of Language and Discourses on Hiddenness: Marginalia on the Prehistory of Subtlety (wei) in Early China”, in: Henriette Hofmann, Barbara Schellewald, Sophie Schweinfurth, Gerald Wildgruber eds., Enthüllen und Verbergen in der Vormoderne / Reveal­ing and Concealing in the premodern period, München: W. Fink, 2021, pp. 87–126.

• “Gesichtsverlust 3.0”, in: Geschichte der Gegenwart, 18.IV.2021, https://geschichtedergegen­wart.ch/gesichtsverlust-3-0/

• (with Manuel Widmer, Matthias Jenny, Balthasar Bickel), “Morphological structure can escape re­duction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers”, in: Studies in Language 45.4 (2021), pp. 707–752.

• (with R. Suter & L. Indraccolo, eds.): The Gongsunlongzi and Other Neglected Texts: Aligning Philo­sophical and Philological Perspectives [Welten Ost­asiens], Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 575 pp. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110587814/html

• Ancient Languages and Civilizations (Leiden)
• Asian and African Studies (Bratislava)
• Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques
• Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics (Hong Kong & Leiden)
• Bulletin of the Jao Tsung-I-Academy of Sinology
• Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiqtuities (Stockholm)
• Cahiers de Linguistique d' Asie-Orientale (Paris & Leiden)
• International Journal of CHinese Character Studies (Seoul)
• Journal of Asian History (Wiesbaden)
• Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia (Leiden)
• Sino-Philosophica
• T' oung Pao (Paris, Princeton & Leiden)
• Worlds of East Asia (Berlin)

• European Association for Chinese Studies (Linguistics section convenor, 2004–2010, Executive board 2010–2016)
• German Association of Chinese Studies 德國漢學協會
• European Association for the Study of Chinese Manuscripts (Founding Member)
• European Association of Chinese Linguistics (Secretary 2001-2003, President 2003-2007)
• International Association of Chinese Linguistics (Executive committee 1997–1999)
• Li Fang-kuei Society for Chinese Linguistics (Board of Directors 2009–2022)
• Swiss Asia Society (Executive Board 2009–, President 2015–2020)
• Academia Europaea (Ordinary Member, Linguistics Section)

cf. research page

• Milad Abedi, “The cultural history of Sino-Iranian lexical contacts” (2020–)

• Catania, Mariolina, “Martin Heideggers ‘ontologische Differenz’ und die klassische chine­sische Philosophie” (UZH, 2023–)

• Chan, Chok Meng, “The Ambivalence of Eulogy: A Study of the Chinese Sòng Genre’s Evolution from Seminal Verse Form to Independent Literary Genre” (U. of Hong Kong, 2020–)

• Chen, Xiaolingtong, “The Role of Colours in Shang and Zhou Divinations: New Perspec­tives on Tian-worship in Bronze Age China” (Universität zu Köln, 2023–)

• Gian Carlo Danuser, “Contextuality and Identification: on the Referentiality of Human Action as delineated in the writings of late Warring States China” (2017–)

• Jin, Yang, “A Comparative Study of the Origins of Chinese and Mesoamerican Writing” (U. Göttingen, 2021–)

• Liao, Xiangyu, “Phonological Studies on the early Cantonese folk songs” (UZH, 2023–)

• Samira Müller, “Made in the western regions or beyond? Foreign products as reflected in Indian loan words found in excavated and transmitted texts from the Han-Dynasty” (2019–)
• Mariana Zorkina, “The imagery of Tang ‘poems on things’: a semiotic approach” (2015–)

Potential Ph.D. students kindly contact me with a project outline, a detailed CV and a transcript of records of your M.A.