Genta Kuno (Area Studies, Urban Studies)
It was dry season in Jakarta. I found myself heading to one of the city’s most infamous prisons with two friends. When our turn came, a warden handed us lanyards and stamped our hands with a UV mark. …

Chika Obiya (Modern History of Central Asia, Central Asian Area Studies)
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with a woman from Belarus who is involved in volunteering to support Ukraine. We met at a gathering of Japanese people who understand Russian, and the first thing she said was, …

Ryota Sakamoto (Field Medicine)
When I was a child, my mother always read picture books to my sister and me before we went to sleep. Even when I was in elementary school, I was often taken to the library, where I chose books eagerly. …

Toshihiko Kishi (Asian History)
During my primary school years, I was very much a “TV kid,” deeply enamored with the program Kanetaka Kaoru Sekai no Tabi (Kaoru Kanetaka’s Journey Around the World), which I watched religiously with my family each week. …

Urszula Frey (Local Studies, Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology)
This spring, I had an opportunity to teach a new subject to undergraduate students, called cultural agility. I was interested in human communication before, …

Chika Yamada (Public Health, Area Studies)
The process by which foreign technology is transmitted and diffused to a particular region is truly complex. In my research on how a particular public health technology spreads in Indonesia, I find myself constantly grappling with how to interpret this process. …

Jean-Pascal Bassino (Economics)
Christopher Goscha, professor at the history department of the University of Quebec à Montréal, is a leading historian of 20th century Vietnam. …

Satoru Kobayashi (Area Studies, Anthropology)
My first visit to Kyoto was for a school excursion (to Kyoto and Nara) in the spring of my third year of middle school. The purpose of the trip was …

Caroline S. Hau (Cultural Studies)
As an elementary-school student in Manila, I spent many a recess peering into a long cabinet of zoological specimens …