TOPICS

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.

On Tuesday 9 December Dr Nándor Papp, a visiting Professor at the College of International Relations, gave a special lecture on the topic: "From Yalta to Malta" – a subjective Eastern Bloc perspective of the Cold War.

Dr. Nándor PAPP graduated from Budapest’s ELTE University as a teacher of English and Russian. He has taught for more than 40 years at the biggest universities in the Hungarian capital, as well as abroad. From the mid 1980s, he was involved - as an interpreter - in state and government level negotiations towards Hungary’s reintegration in the West, membership of  NATO, and of the European Union. Between 2008-2011, he represented his country in Kiev, Ukraine, as a senior diplomat. 

Dr. Papp’s lecture guided the audience through some of the main chapters of the Hungarian "edition" of communism from the dark days of the 1950s, through the consolidation of the regime, Hungarian "goulash communism", and up to the cutting of the barbed wire between East and West and the Fall of the Berlin wall, which iconically marked the end of the bipolar world.  Dr Papp detailed the major events of the era and also gave a rare insight into actual daily life inside the communist bloc during the Cold War. His role as a participant and witness to some of the closing events in the  Cold War and his recollections of life as a young man and student during the 1960s and 1970s gave the audience a unique and fresh perspective on this era.

The lecture was well attended, with a lively and entertaining Q&A session and the faculty and students of the college look forward the Dr Papp's second special lecture in early 2015.

T French, Associate Professor, College of International Relations.