During the summer of 2023, the first cohort of graduate students served as Interns in Japanese institutions. These Internships were generously funded by the Ogawa Gift Fund and UC Santa Barbara’s Graduate Division.
Hanne Deleu, second-year PhD student in EALCS, reports that “as an Intern for the Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University (JAH-Q), I helped the journal’s editors with increasing their outreach to a larger and more diverse academic community around the world, proofread submissions, updated the journal’s website, and assisted with preparing the journal’s next editions. In turn, this Internship provided me with the opportunity to expand my professional network in Japan, gave me access to archival materials crucial for my dissertation project, and allowed me to hone my editing skills. I can’t more highly recommend to other students such an opportunity to delve into the professional side of academia, learning about and contributing to the production of a journal at the interface of the Japanese and international academic worlds.”
Raymond Katsuki Chung, second-year PhD student in EALCS, interned at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, a museum in Tokyo dedicated to the memorialization and study of the American firebombing air raids on Tokyo during World War II. Raymond reports that he was delighted to “assist with expanding the museum’s accessibility to non-Japanese speaking visitors, translate exhibition placards from Japanese, and provide guided English-language tours to a diverse population of visitors. I also moderated a Summer Vacation special event for schoolchildren and participated in planning meetings for Japanese university student trainees organizing their own temporary exhibits. I gained valuable insights on how knowledge might be presented to the general public in a non-academic setting and was honored to work under the direction of Director Yoshida Yutaka, a leading historian of World War II.”
