Eurasia Unit for Border Research (Japan)

Kickoff Conference of the Kyushu University Center for Future Studies "Creating Border Studies in Asia Pacific"

　　　On March 7-8, 2015, the Kyushu University Center for Future Studies hosted a kickoff conference titled, "Creating Border Studies in Asia Pacific." Over 80 people participated in the opening ceremony and the Secretary General of ABS, Jussi Laine, and UBRJ Leader, Akihiro Iwashita, made their keynote speeches. The first session was on border tourism, and Yasunori Hanamatsu and Sergei Golonov presented their work on their respective regions, Japan and Korea, and Russia and China. The second session on international relations invited Paul Richardson from University of Manchester and Sergei Sebastianov from Far Eastern University of Russia. The last session invited Ted Boyle and Yasuhiro Masuda that presented on border regions in Japan. Many of these speakers are "graduates" of the Global COE programme at the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University. (Written by Naomi Chi)