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The FLC (Freshman Learning Camp) was held from June 12^th to 13^th at the Osaka Prefectural Youth Retreat. Oritor students planned and conducted this camp.

About 100 Japanese and International students joined this event. They enjoyed the Sports festival, cooking curry, and the camp fire. They also had learning workshops on international relations topics. Including the three programs they must choose from before their 2^nd year (Global Governance & Peace, Sustainable Development, and Multicultural Understanding.)

The Ritsumeikan University Graduation Ceremony was held on 21 March, 2015.

Graduates, include students from English based program "Global Studies Major"(undergraduate), "Global Cooperation Program(graduate), will soon start their new careers here in Japan and around the world.   

Congratulations to all graduates!

The Fourth Research Seminar of the College of International Relations in 2014 was held by Associate Professor Zsombor Rajkai on the ninth of December, at Koshinkan Room 733. The title of his presentation was “Familism and individualisation in transitional societies: Eastern Europe and socialist East Asia”. The presentation consisted of two main parts. In the first part, Professor Rajkai briefly introduced his academic activities and achievements from the 1990s up to now in two separate academic fields: history (Sino-Central Asian historical relations) and sociology (the different paths of modernisation of non-Western societies seen through family and social change).

Professor Rajkai then talked about a book he published in 2014, titled Family and social change in socialist and post-socialist societies: Change and continuity in Eastern Europe and East Asia. A detailed introduction to the contents of this book (the result of a three-year-long international research study led by Professor Rajkai himself) formed the second (major) part of his presentation. Among other things, he threw light upon the ambiguous and antagonistic co-existence of familism (strong family-centric values) and individualisation (pluralisation of individual and family lifestyles) found in these societies, seen through the change and continuity in demographic behaviour, family values, family solidarity, gender relations, state policy and marketisation. In relation to this, Professor Rajkai called for the necessity, and also outlined the possibility, of a modified second demographic transition theory, stressing that a modified theory would be more accurate in describing the current social transformation of these societies. Finally, Professor Rajkai outlined his upcoming research plan of making a typology of the diverse compressed modernities in an Eurasian context, by addressing not only (post-)socialist societies, but also capitalist non-Asian societies such as Japan, South-Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, etc.