From June 2nd to 4th, the Japan ICU Foundation and ICU’s Social Science Research Institute hosted the Rethinking Peace Studies (RPS) conference in the Kiyoshi Togasaki Memorial Dialogue House on the ICU campus. The conference was the culminating event for RPS, a multi-year initiative sponsored by the JICUF.

Participants gathered from around the world for three days to engage in discussions over 16 paper presentations and 3 keynote addresses. All of the presenters had participated in one of the RPS seminars held in 2014 (ICU, Tokyo) and 2015 (New York and Kandy, Sri Lanka). The keynote speakers were Professors Johan Galtung, Ashis Nandy and Shin Chiba. (The program of the event is available here.)

The three preceding seminars focused on the themes “translation”, “memory” and “dialogue”. The objective of this project was to approach Peace Studies from a diversity of perspectives, and participants traded insights from a wide range of disciplines including politics and international relations, theater, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy and religion, media studies and sociology.  

The event was open to the public, and was attended by ICU students, faculty and members of the public. Professor Galtung’s address was particularly well-attended.

A selection of papers presented at the conference will be edited and published, and a curriculum-development project stemming from RPS is in the works.

On the first evening of the conference, participants were invited to a mixed media performance co-produced by graduate student and Rotary Peace Fellow at ICU Daniel Fernandez and RPS participant Dr. Nitin Sawhney. Daniel is one of twelve recipients of the JICUF’s spring term 2016 grants. Our interview with him will be shared in a separate news article.

The participants had the opportunity to explore Jindaiji on the second evening, and enjoyed the famous Jindaiji-soba!

ICU President Junko Hibiya gave a toast at the final reception, and remarked how the RPS conference embodied ICU’s mission of promoting dialogue across borders.

Special thanks go to Professor Wilhelm Vosse, Director of the Social Science Research Institute at ICU, and Ryo Watanuki, Research Associate, who shouldered the bulk of the logistics.

It has been a great pleasure working with the distinguished participants, as well as our co-organizers at ICU and Rutgers University, Professors Jeremiah Alberg, Alexander Hinton and Giorgio Shani, over the past three years.