European Research Day 2018 (EURAXESS)

Date: 29 September (Saturday) 10:00 -19:00
Venue:Italian Cultural Institute Tokyo


The European Research Day 2018 (ERD 2018) is the fourth edition of an event organised by EURAXESS Japan, which aims to bring together the European research community currently based in Japan to discuss research, careers and relation to Europe.

The 2018 edition is kindly supported by the Italian Cultural Institute Tokyo, which will host the whole event.

The ERD is a one-day workshop featuring presentations by researchers from the European research community of Japan, discussion panels on issues of relevance for Japan-Europe mobility and research cooperation & careers; while fostering networking among participants and representative of European countries participating in the European Research Area.

The JSPS Club will host special session no. 3 with 3 talks:

JSPS Club Session Talk 1: Foreign Law at Japanese Universities
Speaker: Prof. Dr. jur. Heinrich Menkhaus, Chair of German Law, Faculty of Law & Graduate School of Law, Meiji University
The knowledge of international law and the national law of foreign countries is of growing importance for Japan, which is an economic and political global player. In the important faculties and graduate schools of law in Japanese Universities therefore there are several chairs for especially French, German, Anglo-American Law and sometimes other jurisdictions like the EU. Some of these positions are filled with lawyers from the respective countries. The talk concentrates on their experiences and the necessity for the knowledge of foreign languages among Japanese students.

JSPS Club Session Talk 2: Mixed Messages for the Future of Higher Education in Engineering
Speaker: Wilfried Wunderlich, Prof.Dr., Tokai University, Fac.Engr., Dept. Material Science
The United Nations have proclaimed the sustainable development goals (SDG) as important guidelines for future and among them, higher education is most important to challenge the actions against climate change. On the other hand, more and more students enter in engineering, while the budget is shrinking, a phenomenon referred as “crisis of science.” When we started our university study, metals was a secure and booming subject, at that time it would have been unthinkable that people could get unemployed. After third-party funding, private universities have exploited students’ parents as new financial source, but that cannot be the solution. Looking closer there is an ethical problem, the contradiction between the creativity of a scientist and the professional ethics of organizations, which has created a lot of science management problems in the last decades. In the end, we will discuss future scenarios, what role can open innovation or citizen science could play.

JSPS Club Session Talk 3: Harmony and Scientific discourse, a contradiction?
Speaker: Dr. Jacqueline Urakami, Assistant Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology, School of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering and Economics
Graduate students in Japan usually have to join a research laboratory to carry out their research for Master Thesis. I would like to illustrate that encouraging scientific debates among students is a challenging task in research laboratories, because hierarchical relationships between lab members and maintaining harmony are core values in such labs as well.

Report in NvC 03/2018 (in German)