Abdurishid Yakup studied Turkic linguistics and central Asian philology at the Xinjiang University (XJU), Central University of Nationalities (CUN), and Kyoto University, obtaining his PhD in 1996 from the CUN and his Doctor of Literature in 2000 from Kyoto University. He has been assistant and associate professor at the XJU (1984–2002), postdoctoral research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), visiting research fellow and guest professor at the Kyoto University (1997–2000), and a postdoctoral research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Mainz (2000–2003). In 2003–2007 he worked as a research associate at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and in 2007–2016 at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). In 2016–2022 he was coordinator of the Academy project “Turfanforschung.” Since 2009 he has been the Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of Minzu University of China (MUC) in Beijing. Currently, he is a research fellow at the BBAW, and the principal investigator of the research project “The Prints and Printing Culture of the Old Uyghurs on the Northern Silk Road” supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, 2024-).
