The 16th Next-Generation Global Workshop (NGGW), organized by Kyoto University Asian Studies Unit (KUASU), took place 29 and 30 September at the University's Faculty of Letters Main Building. This marked the workshop's return to an in-person format after three years of online meetings.
The 16th NGGW was themed "Migration and Quality of Life: Harnessing the Potential for Social Prosperity" and featured 26 presenters — selected from 80 applicants from across the globe — from countries including India, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany, the United States, and Japan. The presentations were delivered over two days in eight sessions across two tracks, addressing topics ranging from war to labor, marriage, law, ethnicity, religion, and identity as different dimensions of migration. Each session also included comments on the presented research from 14 senior scholars, who participated as advisors from universities and research institutes in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Italy, and other countries and regions.
The event concluded with a wrap-up session, held at the end of the second day, where numerous participants shared their experiences of the workshop, with one commenting on the "mode of knowledge exchange" offered by NGGW as follows: "[It] really helped us think more clearly about our own topics as well as allowing us to engage with others' work and collaborate across oceans." The session also yielded a variety of suggestions for further enhancing the workshop.
The annual workshop has provided successive classes of early-career scholars with a series of skill development opportunities, from preparing presentations, participating in international conferences, to submitting papers to English-language journals. KUASU hopes that these experiences will help participants learn to harness their full potential and build successful academic careers.
