The University of Illinois recently hosted its annual research exchange symposium with scholars from Osaka Metropolitan University. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the partnership between these two institutions, which is coordinated on the Illinois side by the Illinois Global Institute’s Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies.
“The essence of what we do at universities is that we’re trying to build up knowledge and push the boundaries of knowledge forward,” said Matthew Winters, political science professor and director of CEAPS. “You do that with your colleagues here at the university and with your students, but of course, there’s many scholars around the world.”
Winters led the symposium alongside OMU history professor Hisatsugu Kusabu, who has been a crucial part of the partnership for 15 years. The original partnership was with Osaka City University, which subsequently merged with Osaka Prefecture University to form OMU.
“The main activity [of this partnership] has been an annual symposium where faculty and students from Osaka come to Illinois,” Winters said. “That’s typically been in the spring, and they present on a variety of topics and get to engage with our faculty and students.”
The partnership began in 2006, and the symposiums have been going on since 2011. Faculty from the U of I have also regularly visited Osaka City University, creating an exchange of knowledge across an ocean.
Last autumn, OMU opened their new campus in the neighborhood of Morinomiya. The campus is near Osaka Castle, one of Japan’s most famous landmarks.
Four U of I East Asian Languages and Cultures faculty members presented at a symposium inaugurating the campus along with Winters. Those faculty members were Naoko Gunji, Gian Piero Persiani, Robert Tierney (also a professor of comparative and world literature), and Roderick Wilson (also a professor of history).
“We had really knowledgeable expert discussants from the OMU side during the symposium,” Winters said. “And then we got great questions from some of the students and the other faculty who were in the room during the symposium.
“I think that really was one of the initial purposes of this collaboration, having the students from Osaka be able to engage with faculty from Illinois.”
More recently, seven scholars presented at the OMU-Illinois Exchange Symposium at Levis Faculty Center on March 6—some from Illinois, and some from OMU. The event ran for the whole day, including time for discussion and questions between presentations, and breaks for lunch and socializing.
Winters and Kusabu gave the opening remarks. Having visited U of I many times, Kusabu said he likes the scenery and seeing how the campus changes from year to year.
Winters said he was pleased to see a strong level of interdisciplinary collaboration in the symposium lineup.
Among the presenters was Hirofumi Hashimoto, an OMU associate professor in psychology. He presented on individualism and interdependence across different cultures, comparing and contrasting findings about Japan and the U.S.
This was Hashimoto’s second time visiting U of I’s campus.
“I think for humanities, social psychology, and social science scholars or researchers, it is very important to know how their research is evaluated internationally,” Hashimoto said.
U of I psychology professor Dov Cohen was the discussant for Hashimoto’s presentation. He said Hashimoto “tapped into a very rich vein” with his research by looking at multiple different concepts—self-expression, harmony-seeking, and rejection-accordance—instead of simplifying them all into one.
Saya Nakamura, an OMU master’s student in psychology, shared her research on humility as a strategy for managing reputational risk, also comparing findings from Japan and the U.S. Nakamura said she appreciated this opportunity to visit U of I and present, since the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from the true study-abroad experience when she was an undergrad.
“I was studying abroad online,” she said. “But now, I’m here, experiencing the location and atmosphere. It’s totally different.”
Formal discussants were added to the symposium at Illinois this year, after seeing the benefits of having them in the November symposium at OMU. The discussants studied the research closely and gave their professional thoughts, transitioning from the presentation into the open discussion.
“Whenever there’s a formal discussant, I think the likelihood of a long-term conversation between those scholars is higher,” Winters said. “Somebody has more deeply engaged with the research that’s being presented … and in the most ideal world, it would lead to collaborative research, working together on projects.”
When discussing the next steps for this partnership, Winters said they were looking into longer visits.
“We definitely think that our graduate students would benefit from being able to go to Osaka for three months or six months, and our colleagues would then facilitate their integration into [OMU] and their access to resources,” he said. “And, of course, we would do similarly for anybody who came here to visit.”