Aim and Features

Since our program started in 1975, shortly after the University of Tsukuba had been established in October 1973 due to the relocation of its antecedent, the Tokyo University of Education to Tsukuba, it has been the aim of our program to develop regional experts and high-level professionals with broad perspectives so that they can play an active role in the arena of international relations and cooperation at the regional and global levels. We hope that our program can achieve this aim through the study of area studies, which requires an inherent and comprehensive understanding of specific countries or regional community.

Our program has three mottos: internationality, interdisciplinarity and practicality.

First, in the context of ‘internationality,’ our program aims to establish a perspective which enables our students to gain an overall grasp of regional communities in the midst of our increasingly globalized world. We actively accept international students. Our program offers more than 70 subjects conducted in English, and five special Master’s programs taught entirely in English.

Second, in the context of ‘interdisciplinarity,’ our program aims to cultivate the ability to analyze the actual state of contemporary regional communities and the mastery of problems and methods of other fields in addition to one’s specialized field.

Third, in the context of ‘practicality,’ our program fosters the ability of self-expression and practical planning by providing students with opportunities to participate in international academic conferences, study-abroad programs, and fieldwork conducted in cooperation with foreign universities that have exchange/partnership agreements with us.

Our program consists of the seven Studies Courses as follows:

1. East Asian Studies Course
2. Southeast Asian Studies Course
3. Central Eurasian Studies Course
4. Middle East and North African Studies Course
5. European Studies Course
6. North American Studies Course
7. Latin American Studies Course

We provide flexible curriculums to facilitate comparative and interregional research in order to deal with the changing concepts of “region” and transnational problems in the globalizing world.

Chair, Master’s Program in International Area Studies

Mari MINOWA

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