Category Archives: News

Sylff’s Silver Jubilee in China (4): Four Universities Celebrate 25th Anniversary in 2019

November 28, 2019

Sylff was first established in China in 1992, and five Chinese universities celebrated the program’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 2018. In 2019, four more universities—Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Chongqing, and Yunnan—which joined Sylff in 1994, also held their twenty-fifth anniversary ceremonies. These four universities were selected as Sylff institutions with the aim of selecting not only the best-known universities in the country but also those promoting ethnic diversity.

The celebrations began in June in northern China at Xinjiang University and Inner Mongolia University. The delegation from Japan visiting the two schools was led by Nippon Foundation and Sylff Association Chairman Yohei Sasakawa and included members of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research (Sylff Association secretariat) and the China Education Association for International Exchange.

Xinjiang University holds the largest number of Uyghur students in China and is committed to serving the needs of the regional community, respecting ethnic diversity, and advancing a dynamic international strategy. This year also marks the ninety-fifth anniversary of the university’s founding.

Sylff Association Chairman Yohei Sasakawa speaks with Xinjiang fellows during a luncheon reception.

The anniversary event at Inner Mongolia University on June 12 featured a donation ceremony for the Ryoichi Sasakawa Memorial Library, to which over 6,000 books have been donated since its establishment in 2010. After the ceremony, Mr. Sasakawa held a group interview with members of the local media. One of the journalists, it turned out, was a Sylff fellowship recipient when she was studying for a master’s degree at Inner Mongolia University.

Mr. Sasakawa is interviewed by local reporters.

One of the journalists, who was a Sylff fellow at Inner Mongolia University, poses in traditional Mongol dress for a commemorative photo with Mr. Sasakawa.

Events in southwestern China, meanwhile, were held in September, starting with a meeting of Chinese Sylff administrators on September 22 at Chongqing University. Administrators from all 10 Sylff universities in China (Fudan, Jilin, Lanzhou, Nanjing, Peking, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sun Yat-sen) gathered to discuss concrete plans to focus Sylff funds on a smaller number of select fellows. Ten fellows who were selected in 2019 from the 10 universities were invited to speak about their research activities and gave inspiring presentations to meeting participants.

Participants of the Sylff administrators’ meeting at Chongqing University.

Chongqing University is also marking its ninetieth anniversary this year. “It’s a great honor to celebrate Sylff’s twenty-fifth anniversary at Chongqing in this very special year,” as Mr. Sasakawa noted at the ceremony on September 23. “Seeing how successfully the program has unfolded at the university, I feel very proud that we asked Chongqing University to join our Sylff community two decades ago. I hope that everyone here will work toward a brighter future for all, no matter what difficulties you may encounter along the way.”

Mr. Sasakawa’s remarks at Chongqing were greeted with warm applause.

The September 25 anniversary celebration at Yunnan University was attended by over 200 participants. Yunnan fellow Liu Guoqian, who received a fellowship in 2007 and whose wife was also a fellowship recipient, made a speech during the ceremony, inviting laughter when he jokingly noted, “Thanks to Sylff, I was able to find not only my career path but also my life partner!”

The ceremony hall was filled with over 200 participants.

Yunnan fellow Liu Guoqian makes a speech during the ceremony.

 

 

SLI Awards for Projects to Ensure a Democratic Election and Protect Indigenous People’s Rights

November 6, 2019

The Sylff Association Secretariat is pleased to announce two recent recipients of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) award. SLI supports Sylff fellows’ initiatives to change society for the better with awards of up to US$10,000.

The two winners, chosen from among many applicants, are Mulatu Alemayehu Moges and Bruno Pegorari.

Mulatu Moges

After completing a PhD at the University of Oslo, where he was a Sylff fellow, Mulatu Moges joined the faculty of Addis Ababa University, where he is currently an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication.

He will use the SLI grant to conduct capacity-building workshops for journalists in Ethiopia, which in May 2020 will hold its first national election under the administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, recipient of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

The media will play a crucial role in ensuring a free and democratic election by providing citizens with unbiased information and by promoting people’s active participation in the electoral process.

 

Bruno Pegorari

Bruno Pegorari completed his master’s degree at the University of São Paulo, where he received a Sylff fellowship, and is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales.

His research and social-action initiatives focus on the issue on land rights of indigenous people in Brazil, who were forced to leave their homes by a judicial decision. He has been working continuously on this issue since 2016 with the aim of negotiating a nonviolent settlement through the application of international law.

The Sylff Association Secretariat is excited about helping fellows put their enthusiasm and ideas into action for the betterment of society. Congratulations to both recipients on winning the award. The two projects will be carried out over the coming months, and reports will be posted on this website.

We are looking forward to supporting many more social initiatives that can lead to positive change in society.

Sylff@Tokyo: Thriving in Utrecht’s International Atmosphere

October 30, 2019

Anna-Liis Sutt, a current Sylff fellowship recipient at Utrecht University, visited the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo on August 20, 2019. Having just earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Utrecht, she was visiting Japan for the first time before beginning her master’s program at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the fall.

Sutt, standing second from right, during her visit to the Sylff Association secretariat.

During the two-year master’s program, Sutt is interested in investigating allegations of money laundering by EU financial institutions from a legal perspective. It is a topical theme that, she feels, is under-researched.

Sutt was born in Estonia and grew up in the United States and Luxemburg. She thrives in the international atmosphere of student life at Utrecht. As an undergraduate student, Sutt represented international students in the student council and made certain that their views were reflected in university decisions and regulations.

She hopes to continue to represent student groups as a graduate student. In the future, Sutt is interested in working in the public sector for such organizations as the International Monetary Fund. We wish her success at Utrecht in both her academic and social-oriented activities.

 

 

Sylff@Tokyo: Latvia Fellow Speaks at Global Security Conference in Nagasaki

October 30, 2019

Didzis Klavins, a Sylff fellowship recipient in 2012 while attending the University of Latvia, visited the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo on August 12, 2019. He is currently a Senior Researcher at the University of Latvia.

Didzis Klavins, right, with Tomoko Yamada of the Sylff Association secretariat.

Visiting Japan for the first time, Klavins attended the International Conference on Global Risk, Security, and Ethnicity, co-organized by the International Political Science Association and Nagasaki University. As a panelist for a session on “Emerging Technologies and New Perspectives on Risk and Security,” he made a presentation on “The Relationship of Innovation Diplomacy and Security in the Nordic and Baltic Countries.”

His academic interests include diplomacy, international organizations, and international relations, especially in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries. He is currently involved in a three-year research project funded by the EU that is examining the relationship between innovation diplomacy and security in those countries. The project involves several professors at different universities in the EU and focuses on three major subjects: diaspora diplomacy, innovation diplomacy, and digital diplomacy.

Klavins is actively engaged in researching these topics as well as in teaching at University of Latvia. We were happy to meet him in Tokyo and wish him much success in his academic pursuits.

 

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu Named among the Most Influential People of African Descent

October 18, 2019

The Sylff Association Secretariat is pleased to share news that Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, a 2009–2011 PhD Sylff fellow at Howard University, has been named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) in the category of “Religious and Humanitarian” in 2019.

 

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu


MIPAD’s mission
is “to recognize the positive contributions made by people of African descent, worldwide” and to “build a progressive global network of civil society actors to join together and support the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent, 2015–2024, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/237 and now officially recognized by the African Union (AU).”


Ezeanya-Esiobu completed her PhD degree in African Development and Policy Studies at Howard University in 2011 before joining the faculty of the University of Rwanda, where she is currently a senior lecturer/researcher. As a Sylff fellow, she organized a workshop on leadership and character development for young Rwandans in 2016, funded by Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI).

She recently published Education and Indigenous Knowledge in Africa with the support of the International Development Research Center Canada, an open access book that has been very well received across universities and colleges in Africa. She is also being recognized beyond academia, appearing on a TED talk on “How Africa Can Use Its Traditional Knowledge to Make Progress.

Congratulations on being named an influential global leader, and we wish her even greater success in her future endeavors.

Sylff@Tokyo: The Importance of Promoting Basic Education in Developing Countries

October 18, 2019

Mio Morimoto, who was awarded a Sylff fellowship in 2019 by Waseda University, visited the Sylff Association secretariat on August 2. She is currently pursuing a PhD in educational development, and the theme of her dissertation is “Parental Involvement and Child Learning in Developing Countries: A Case Study on Elementary Education in India.”

She hopes to contribute to the improvement of basic education in developing countries, which she thinks is most important in enabling children to survive and rise above a difficult environment.

Morimoto, seated center, with Sylff Association secretariat members.

After completing her undergraduate studies at Waseda, she worked at the Kumon Institution of Education for about three years.

While continuing her doctoral research at Waseda University, she is visiting India for the sixth time between September and December 2019 for an internship at the UNICEF office in New Delhi, where she also hopes to gather data and network with local school officials and researchers. She feels that field work is very important in learning about key elementary education issues in India.

She has expressed her wish to apply for a Sylff Research Abroad grant so she can visit India again and network with Sylff fellows from Jadavpur University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. The Sylff Association secretariat looks forward to hearing from her and hopes that she will take full advantage of the various support programs and the global Sylff network to achieve her professional goals.

Sylff Leaders Workshop 2018–19 (5): Final Presentations by Iker Imanol De Urrutia, Beverley M. Thaver, Dejan Soskic, and Michaela Guldanova

September 20, 2019

In this series, the final presentations of all 20 participants of Sylff Leaders Workshop are introduced as five news articles (with links to the summaries of four fellows each).

The spring session of Sylff Leaders Workshop 2018-19 was held from April 7 to 14, 2019, in Beppu, Oita, with the generous support of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. It brought together the 20 Sylff fellows from 20 countries—selected from among 114 applicants—who had participated in the fall session in Sasayama. The workshop was aimed at deepening fellows’ understanding of differences in values and perspectives and held on the topic of the “Future of Food Production in 2030.”

The participating fellows made final presentations during the closing session on April 11 covering one or more of the following topics: (1) self-introduction, (2) changes in values, perspectives, or ideas experienced during the course of the two workshop sessions, (3) how the world is likely to change by 2030, and (4) the kind of leader you see yourself as being now or aspire to become in 2030.

This article introduces the presentations of the following four fellows:

(Clockwise from upper left) Iker I. De Urrutia, Beverley M. Thaver, Dejan Soskic, and Michaela Guldanova.

Iker I. De Urrutia
Beverley M. Thaver
Dejan Soskic
Michaela Guldanova

 

Sylff@Tokyo: New Zealand Fellow’s Deep Ties to the Sylff Community

September 19, 2019

Grant Morris, a 1999–2000 PhD Sylff fellow at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, visited the Sylff Association Secretariat in Tokyo on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. He has been working at the Victoria University of Wellington since 2002, where he is currently an associate professor in law.

Grant (center) in conversation with the members of the Sylff Association secretariat

His main research areas are mediation, negotiation, and legal history, and he recently co-authored Mediation in New Zealand (Thomson Reuters, 2018), the first comprehensive scholarly treatment of mediation in the country. 

Morris was on his second visit to Tokyo after a 16-year hiatus, accompanying the New Zealand team that participated in the International Negotiation Competition, held at Sophia University in Tokyo. He was the coach of the NZ team, comprising students at his university, which placed sixth overall (with “trans-Tasman rivals” Australia coming in first).

After the competition he visited Kyoto, traveling from Tokyo by Shinkansen, which, he says “was the fastest and most efficient train I have ever travelled on!” In Kyoto he visited the new International Mediation Center, located at Doshisha University.

We are very pleased that he also dropped by the Sylff Association Secretariat, giving us a chance to introduce the many opportunities for additional support available for Sylff fellows. “It was great to visit the team at Sylff and discuss current projects. There is a lot of very exciting work being done,” he said.

Grant, center in the first row, during his visit to the Sylff Association secretariat

To our pleasant surprise, we also learned during our conversation that he has very strong links to the Sylff community. His wife was a Sylff fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington, and one of his students, Jennifer Moore, was also a fellow who recently received an SLI grant to improve medical injury responses.

We hope that he will come back to Tokyo often to strengthen his ties with the Association.

SRA Awardees for Fiscal 2019, First Round

September 2, 2019

https://www.sylff.org/support_programs/sra/

The Sylff Association secretariat is pleased to announce the twenty recipients of SRA awards in the first selection round for fiscal 2019. In this round, we again received outstanding applications for research in various specialized fields from fellows all over the world.

We reviewed all applications carefully from the perspectives of eligibility, the feasibility of the proposals, and the relevance of the proposed research to the applicants’ academic pursuits. The awardees in this round were at different stages of their research, some taking advantage of SRA to collect fundamental data for their doctoral dissertation, with others using the opportunity to verify their findings and receive further advice from overseas experts.

Congratulations to all the awardees! We send them our best wishes and hope their research abroad will be fruitful and pave the way for the next stage of academic advancement. The twenty awardees are as follows:

* Listed in alphabetical order.

Name

Sylff Institution

From (Country)

To
(SRA Host Institution, Country)

Yance Arizona

University of Indonesia

Netherlands

Osaka University of Tourism and University of New South Wales (Japan and Australia)

Benedikt Behlert

Ruhr University Bochum

Germany

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Switzerland)

Wanxiang Cai

Chongqing University

Netherlands

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, University of Cambridge Judge Business School (UK)

Matías Ariel Chiappe Ippolito

El Colegio de México

Japan

El Colegio de México (México)

Olivia de Quintana Figueiredo Pasqualeto

University of São Paulo

Brazil

International Labour Organization (Switzerland)

Ferretti Fernandez Flavia Pierina

University of Chile

Chile

Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Germany)

Robert Haua

Massey University

 New Zealand

University College London and University of Nottingham (UK)

Milutin Jesic

University of Belgrade

Serbia

Coimbra University (Portugal)

Cynthia Kwakyewah

York University

UK

Minerals Commission, Petroleum Commission, Ministry of Lands & Natural Resources etc. (Ghana)

Xiao Li

Chongqing University

China

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA)

Milos Markovic

University of Belgrade

Serbia

University of Tokyo (Japan)

UK Mong Marma

Ruhr University Bochum

Germany

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (Bangladesh)

Fadzayi Marcia Maruza

University of the Western Cape

South Africa

Zimbabwe National Archives (Zimbabwe)

Tomas Michalek

Comenius University in Bratislava

Slovakia

Centre for Science in Policy, Diplomacy and Society, University of Auckland (New Zealand)

Avia Moore

York University

Canada

Shtetl Neukolln, Berlin (Germany)

Anna Nakamura

Keio University

Japan

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausannne (Switzerland)

Lurian Pires Klein

University of Coimbra

Portugal

LUT School of Engineering Science & LUT School of Energy Systems (Finland)

Shounak Set

Jadavpur University

UK

Jadavpur University (India)

Erin Upton

University of Oregon

USA

Discipline of Geography & Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania (Australia)

Xinming Xia

Peking University

China

Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley (USA)

 

Sylff Leaders Workshop 2018–19 (4): Final Presentations by Ronya Foy Connor, Rosangela Malachias, Andrew Prosser, and Nuruddeen Mohammed Suleiman

August 29, 2019

In this series, the final presentations of all 20 participants of Sylff Leaders Workshop are introduced as five news articles (with links to the summaries of four fellows each).

The spring session of Sylff Leaders Workshop 2018-19 was held from April 7 to 14, 2019, in Beppu, Oita, with the generous support of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. It brought together the 20 Sylff fellows from 20 countries—selected from among 114 applicants—who had participated in the fall session in Sasayama. The workshop was aimed at deepening fellows’ understanding of differences in values and perspectives and held on the topic of the “Future of Food Production in 2030.”

The participating fellows made final presentations during the closing session on April 11 covering one or more of the following topics: (1) self-introduction, (2) changes in values, perspectives, or ideas experienced during the course of the two workshop sessions, (3) how the world is likely to change by 2030, and (4) the kind of leader you see yourself as being now or aspire to become in 2030.

This article introduces the presentations of the following four fellows:

(Clockwise from upper left)Ronya Foy Connor, Rosangela Malachias, Andrew Prosser, and Nuruddeen Mohammed Suleiman.

Ronya Foy Connor
Rosangela Malachias
Andrew Prosser
Nuruddeen Mohammed Suleiman