Background

 This project builds on the ongoing 21st Century COE project “Aiming for COE of Integrated Area Studies: Establishing Field Stations in Asia and Africa, and Integrating Research Activities and On-Site-Education” (2002-2007), organized by the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. In particular, it inherits the fieldwork-oriented postgraduate education system, including the fourteen “field stations”, set up and currently operating in various parts of Asia and Africa for on-site education. In the last five years a number of doctoral theses have been successfully completed through this system, and some outstanding research monographs have been published.

 This project seeks to combine our experience of on-site education with paradigm formation. We plan to create a training program for young researchers (from Ph.D. students to postdoctoral fellows and untenured research fellows), to enable them to learn diverse area studies- and frontier technology-related disciplines in addition to their own specialization. This training program consists of participation in interdisciplinary taught courses, collaborative fieldworks, participation in seminars and workshops, and presentation of their papers at international conferences of an interdisciplinary nature. While the main members of this program are responsible for formulating research questions and implementing research methods, centering on the four core projects (see below), we envisage that much of the actual work will be carried out as a collaborative work of young researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds. We plan to recruit postdoctoral fellows and research fellows internationally, and help develop diverse international career paths for them, leading to positions in academia, international organizations, government and NGOs. More than half of the funds applied for this project will be spent for the employment and research of these researchers, while the rest will be used for typical research activities and for the maintenance of “field stations” and field sites for scientific research abroad.