In this conference, Japanese and British university students, including graduate students, will apply from each country for participation in the UK-JP 2020 Student Conference. The selected students (a maximum of thirty participants total) will engage in an international exchange of lectures, seminars, debates and policy-making exercises, which will be conducted over Zoom. (In previous years we spent a week living in either the UK or Japan for the duration of the conference.) The theme of the conferences focus on social and political issues that affect both the UK and Japan. Our fifth conference will be held in London (virtually) in August 2020 with the theme of “Climate Action”. The selected students will be from top tier universities in the UK and in Japan, motivated and with a multitude of interests, but that focus on politics and society through global thinking and international understanding.

Before the conference begins, the participants will be involved in preliminary study sessions which aim to improve their foundational knowledge relating to the theme of the conference. There will be two structured preliminary sessions leading up to the conference. The sessions will be hosted by a committee member and participants will meet over zoom in a group setting. The preliminary sessions involve discussing a set of readings selected by the committee in collaboration with the conference speakers and will focus on the participant’s own research, experience, and discussion.

Following the conference, there will be a series of discussions which allow the participants to reflect on their shared experiences and how they can implement them in their own communities. This year we are funding a large-scale field work project which will be carried out throughout the year. This project will be developed and planned during the conference and will be the culmination of our policy development projects as well as the other group projects which participants take part in during the conference.

All of our students remain active in their respective interests and fields, many go on to represent in their university politics and sociology societies or go on to hold political posts themselves. The UK-JP Student Conference furthers our contributions to scholarly debates and our local communities in each respective country.