Academic Studies

The founding of the Graduate School in 2006 brought research and teaching even closer together at IN-EAST. In the two newly accredited MA programmes conducted in English − MA Contemporary East Asian Studies and MA Japanese Sociolinguistics − small groups of international students pursue courses of study in extremely close proximity to research. Some of these students will have the opportunity to acquire an additional qualification by entering the Doctoral Programme in East Asian Studies.

In addition to the Doctoral Programme, an international research training group (Graduiertenkolleg) on “Risk and East Asia” is now in the pipeline. Plans call for this training group to be established at IN-EAST in collaboration with the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, which were recently named “Centres of Excellence” for Japanese and Chinese Studies by the British research promotion institutions. An application for funding has already been submitted by a task force headed by Prof. Karen Shire. As part of this training programme, the doctoral candidates will conduct some of their education and research directly in Asia at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Tokyo and at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Renmin University in Peking.

The international research training group and the collaboration within EastAsiaNet are the starting points for the further expansion of research on “Risk and East Asia”.