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)Susan Rachel Banki, Nomingerel Davaadorj, Maria Adelasia Divona, and Jennifer Dysart.

Susan Rachel Banki
Nomingerel Davaadorj
Maria Adelasia Divona
Jennifer Dysart

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)Kabira Namit, Anna Plater-Zyberk, Nermeen Varawalla, and Trisia Angela Farrelly.

Kabira Namit
Anna Plater-Zyberk
Nermeen Varawalla
Trisia Angela Farrelly

On July 16, 2019, a conference on “Gender-Based Violence against Women in Jordan: Rethinking Social, Legal, and Healthcare Services” was held at the University of Jordan. This one-day conference was organized by Dr. Tayseer Abu Odeh (Sylff fellow 2007, University of Jordan), with the support of a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant.

Abu Odeh, second from right, moderating Panel Four of the conference.

Among the prominent Jordanian and other figures invited as speakers included Minister of Justice Bassam Talhouni; former Minister of Culture and a leading human rights lawyer Asma Khader; Jordanian Senator Taghreed Hikmet, who was the first woman judge in Jordan and the first woman judge at the International Criminal Tribunal from an Arab country; former Senator Raeda Qutob, who served as secretary general for the Higher Population Council and the National Council for Family Affairs; keynote speaker Asmahan Wadi, a consultant and researcher at the Arab State Regional Office of UNFPA Palestine; and Secretary General of the Jordanian National Commission for Women in Jordan Salma Nims.

The auditorium was packed with students and professionals from such sectors as law, civil society, healthcare, government, and academia. They engaged in lively and in-depth discussions on practical measures to stop violence against women.

The impact of the conference will hopefully continue to be felt long after the event, leading eventually to fundamental changes in Jordanian society. Congratulations to Abu Odeh on organizing this important forum with so many illustrious participants, and we look forward to receiving and uploading his report on the website soon.

The audience waits for the start of the conference at the Rum Auditorium of the University of Jordan.

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) Stefan Buchholz, Ayo Chan, Eleni Konstantinou, and Evgeny Kandilarov.

Stefan Buchholz
Ayo Chan
Evgeny Gerchev Kandilarov
Eleni Konstantinou

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 Sennane Gatakaa Riungu, a visa processing officer for the Australian High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya, and Shangrila Joshi, a faculty member at the Evergreen State College in Washington, United States.

Riungu’s project seeks to provide capacity building and agribusiness training for community members in Maara constituency, Kenya—her home community—to equip them with the tools and information needed to develop agricultural business enterprises. Aside from her professional work at the Commission, she has been engaged in empowering her home community with others for over 10 years by utilizing their vast networks outside the community.

Transplanting tomato seedlings in Kenya.

In 2013, she implemented her first SLI project aimed at providing basic professional development skills for community youths (see https://www.sylff.org/news_voices/13125/). Her second SLI project is a scaled-out version of the initiative that focuses more on providing practical knowledge and skills so that the community can become financially self-supporting.

Joshi will hold workshops and a forum in Nepal, her home country, in August. She will serve as a facilitator to give forest users a better understanding of climate mitigation mechanisms such as REDD+ and lead discussions on issues of fairness, equity, and justice in the implementation of REDD+.

Local women of a forest community in Nepal.

She plans to document the views and ideas of the participants so that such mechanisms will be implemented in socially just and equitable ways. She was inspired to organize the project through multiple research field visits to Nepal, which aroused a passion for her to make a real-world impact by utilizing her professional knowledge as a researcher of climate justice and climate policy.

The Sylff Association Secretariat is excited about helping fellows put their enthusiasm and ideas into action for the betterment of their home communities. 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.

Women, Mobility and Incarceration by Jadavpur fellow Rimple Mehta has become a widely discussed book in the Indian media. Published by Routledge, it is an account of Bangladeshi women who have been imprisoned in India for entering the country illegally and sheds light on the plight of female prisoners, who are often “invisibilised and incarcerated.”

Firstpost

https://www.firstpost.com/india/invisibilised-and-incarcerated-once-migrants-in-search-for-better-futures-bangladeshi-women-now-languish-in-jail-6879031.html

The Indian Express

https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/rimple-mehta-bangladesh-migrants-women-sexuality-the-invisible-people-nrc-5689240/?fbclid=IwAR3eHD73BNwzsTob9iUj-zJcJ5KtgTtLrsekvbkyZo8MulTuJLEGeSXTm0o

Dr. Mehta, who received a Sylff fellowship from Jadavpur University, is now an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Science, India. While at Jadavpur, she was granted a Sylff Research Abroad award to conduct research in Hungary. She also recently organized a Sylff Leadership Initiatives workshop to improve conditions faced by women prisoners in India.

A Workshop organized by Rimple Mehta (right) with a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant. Practitioners, scholars, and activists were invited to discuss the plight of women prisoners in India.

The Sylff Association secretariat is happy that Mehta has made use of Sylff support programs to advance her career, and that her decade-long work is now being broadly recognized by society.

Matías Ariel Chiappe Ippolito dropped by the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo on Tuesday, June 25, 2019. Chiappe received a Sylff fellowship in 2013–15 while attending El Colegio de México.

Chiappe, standing center, with members of the Sylff Association secretariat.

He is currently pursuing a PhD in international culture and communication studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. He also holds a teaching assistant position at Waseda’s Global Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies program, where he leads classes in academic writing and Japanese literature.

Originally from Argentina, Chiappe began studying Japanese in his home country and moved to El Colegio de México, where he received a master’s in Japanese studies. In his PhD dissertation, he is analyzing Japanese literary works in which Latin America is depicted or discussed. One Japanese novelist he is studying is Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe. Oe was invited to teach at El Colegio de México in 1976 and 1977.

Chiappe presents a paper during the Asian Studies Conference in June 2019.

Chiappe has a deep understanding of Japanese culture and literature and has translated several books from Japanese into English and Spanish. On June 29 and 30, 2019, he participated in the Asian Studies Conference at Saitama University, northwest of Tokyo, and presented a paper titled, “Utopian Images of Latin America in Japanese Literature: Catholic Redemptions in Kenzaburo Oe’s Post-Mexican Fiction.”

We hope he will make an important contribution to deeper ties and fuller understanding between Japan and Latin America.

Erika Mitsui as a violinist.

Erika Mitsui, a Sylff fellowship recipient in 2015 while attending the Juilliard School as a violinist, visited the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo on Tuesday, June 18, 2019.

After graduating from Juilliard, Mitsui performed at various venues, ranging from concert halls to public places of all kinds. One such venue was an inpatient ward of the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. This turned out to be a life-changing and inspiring experience, as she realized that music can help heal even the most seriously ill patients.

Seeing the reactions of the patients who were helped emotionally, Mitsui made up her mind to transition to a career in medicine, and she will start her studies in the MD program at the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, this coming August.

She feels that becoming a medical doctor will allow her to integrate her background in East Asian studies at Columbia (undergraduate) and music at Juilliard (master’s) with her desire to make a direct impact on patient’s lives and on the community. In addition to practicing clinical medicine, she hopes to pursue a career in research and health policy.  

Mitsui, standing second from left, during her visit to the Sylff Association secretariat.

She is currently working on projects to perform music in hospitals in New York and in Japan. We ｗish her much success in whatever field she chooses to pursue.

Christiane Wüllner and Jörn Benzinger, standing center, with members of the Sylff Association secretariat.

On May 20, 2019, Christiane Wüllner and Jörn Benzinger of Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) visited the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo. Wüllner is currently the managing director of the RUB Research School and a key member of the RUB Sylff Steering Committee. Benzinger is the coordinator of international affairs. The two, on their first visit to Japan, were attending university fairs in Tokyo and Osaka to invite prospective students to apply to RUB.

It was also an opportunity to discuss the Sylff new scheme at RUB in 2017. RUB has launched a uniquely structured “Sylff College” with a mission to facilitate multidisciplinary research. The first  group of Sylff fellows share an academic theme, “forced migration,” enabling each to develop his or her research while collaborating in various ways, such as organizing international academic conferences. Other students and professors have become interested in this theme, and the group has subsequently grown.

We hope that “Sylff College” evolves in creative and positive ways in the years ahead.

Paulina Berrios, a Sylff fellowship recipient in 2003–04 while attending the University of Chile, visited the Sylff Association secretariat in Tokyo on Thursday, March 7, 2019. She is currently an administrator in the Institutional Research Office of the University of Chile in Santiago.

Berrios, third from left, during her visit to the Sylff Association secretariat.

Visiting Japan for the fourth time, Berrios attended an international conference on academic teaching and research in the knowledge society, hosted by the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, on March 4–5, 2019. At the conference, Berrios made a presentation on the “Academic Profession in Chile: The Fieldwork Experience and Some Preliminary Findings.”

Berrios’s core academic interest has been the working conditions of the teaching staff at Chile universities. Now that she has become an administrator at the University of Chile, she is able to examine the issue from the viewpoint of both a researcher and a practitioner, adding depth and balance to her insights.

Berrios, presenting on her Sylff Research Abroad experience at 2014 Sylff Administrators Meeting in Tokyo.

Berrios has continued to engage with the Sylff community during the course of her career. She has conducted research abroad with an SRA grant, has served on the Sylff Fellows Council, and was invited to make a presentation at the Sylff Administrators Meeting in 2014. We hope to continue working closely with her and will be supporting any initiatives on strengthening networking among University of Chile Sylff fellows.