Venue: KU Leuven, Belgium
Date: 23–26 August 2020
Project director: Dr Jan Schmidt (KU Leuven)
Language for applications and during the workshop: English
Application deadline: 14 April 2020
To apply please visit our application portal.
The European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) invites doctoral students in all humanities and social sciences to apply for the 16th EAJS Workshop for Doctoral Students (23–26 August 2020). The workshop will take place at KU Leuven. EAJS will cover the costs of travel (up to 400 EUR) and accommodation for the duration of the workshop for a group of 18-20 doctoral students and 4-5 senior scholars who will act as advisors. Moreover, EAJS will also waive registration fees of the selected PhD students for the 16th EAJS International Conference which will take place 26-29 August in Ghent, Belgium.
The EAJS Workshops for Doctoral Students aim to create a European multidisciplinary network of advanced graduate students and senior scholars in Japanese Studies. The informal environment of the workshop provides a unique opportunity for participants to work together intensively to enhance individual projects and engage in in-depth discussions of common themes and methods. Through presentations and focused sessions, students give and receive critical feedback on dissertation projects, fieldwork plans and preliminary results. Students will be asked to read the work of their peers and prepare for workshop presentations linking their own work to the broader international Japanese Studies field. Students will also get extensive opportunity to discuss their projects with a senior scholar in their respective field.
Eligibility
Graduate students working on a dissertation topic related to Japan, regardless of citizenship, who are enrolled at universities in Europe, and students of European nationality who are enrolled in graduate programmes outside Europe are eligible. Students travelling to the workshop from outside Europe should expect no more than 400 EUR to be paid towards their transportation costs. Doctoral Students from European universities that do not have major centres of Japanese Studies are especially encouraged to apply. Applications are particularly welcome from graduate students in the early fieldwork phase through the middle stages of dissertation writing. All applicants are expected to have studied the Japanese language and to use materials written in Japanese as sources for their dissertations. Applicants are expected to provide evidence of Japanese language ability in their applications.
Application and Selection Process
Please be aware that EAJS uses an online system to manage submissions for its workshop for doctoral students.
In the first instance your application should include:
- A curriculum vitae;
- A short cover letter (maximum 250 words), indicating why you wish to attend the workshop as well as the current state of progress of the doctoral work;
- A summary of the dissertation project (maximum 500 words), explaining topic, relevance, research question, methodology, and current stage of the dissertation project.
These documents must be submitted via the application website by 14 April 2020. Selected candidates will be notified by mid-May 2020.
Selected candidates will then be required to send a project report (about 5000 words) to the project director by 17 July 2020.
This project report should have the following structure:
- title and author
- abstract with keywords
- current state of research (empirical findings and theories) and research gap(s)
- research question of project and its relevance respectively own motivation
- theoretical framework, methodology of project, and schedule
- hypotheses and/or preliminary results
- (possible) difficulties in realizing research project
- quoted literature
It goes without saying that the project report should conform to best academic practice (language, referencing, etc.). It will be the basis for short presentations on the individual research projects, for group presentations and discussions, and for the individual supervision.
Note that the second application stage will not be competitive. Each applicant who receives a request to send in a full project report will be accepted. However, an extension of the deadline for the project report will not be possible since all project reports need to be sent to all participants. Selected candidates who fail to submit their project report by the deadline will not be admitted to the workshop.
All selected candidates will furthermore be required to submit a short report (250-300 words) on their participation in the workshop until 30 September 2020.
Reports by participating scholars will appear on the EAJS website at www.eajs.eu as well as in the EAJS Bulletin.
Successful applicants also have to be members of the European Association for Japanese Studies by the time of the workshop.