International Collaboration and Cooperation in Research

NIHU and its six member institutes together have academic exchange agreements with sixty-six universities and research institutes in other countries. In FY 2010, a number of international projects were conducted in collaboration with such overseas organizations, including cosponsorship of an international gathering on “Japan-China Comparative Book History Research” with three Chinese research institutes, an overseas symposium at the University of Indonesia, an international symposium titled “Whaling Cultures of the World: Past, Present, and Future” held at the National Museum of Ethnology, and a joint excavation project with the National University of San Marcos (Peru).

Based on an agreement between NIHU and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, U.K., three U.K. graduate students pursued research at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in FY 2010. The content of the agreement was renewed in January 2011 to include exchange of young researchers in addition to places for graduate students to pursue research.

About the Memorandum of Understanding

A memorandum of understanding concerning cooperation was concluded with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the United Kingdom.

The NIHU and the AHRC (United Kingdom) signed a memorandum of understanding related to cooperating on academic activities such as peer review and the formation of a scholarly network.

The signing ceremony took place at AHRC headquarters on October 18, 2009. President Yoneo Ishii, and Executive Directors Yasuhiko Nagano and Jin Osaki were in attendance from the NIHU, and the agreement was signed by President Ishii and Philip Esler, the AHRC's Chief Executive.

In area and museum studies, fields in which both organizations are specialists, the AHRC will act as an intermediary when the NIHU seeks the cooperation of universities and humanities research organizations in the United Kingdom, and the NIHU will play a similar role between Japanese and British researchers. Both organizations are also expected to consider ways in which to cooperate on all the other programs each is implementing.

In addition, the NIHU is planning to go forward with the institutionalization of doctoral candidate acceptance and proactively provide opportunities for highly capable graduate students from the UK to utilize the world-class facilities possessed by each research institute of the National Institutes for the Humanities. Furthermore, the NIHU is planning hereafter to consider exchanges of professional expertise and technology in the area of peer review.