Research Project

• JCAS Page in Research Collaborations
• JCAS HP

• Special Interest Group for Area Studies Resource Sharing HP
• Special Interest Group on Area Informatics HP

JCAS

Research Activities and Seminars

The Japan Consortium for Area Studies (JCAS) is an association of research and/or educational institutions engaged in area studies and non-government organizations working on various regional and global issues. JCAS is dedicated to the advancement of area studies to deal with challenging global issues. It aims to promote more interactive linkages between the academic world and civil society by sharing their respective achievement with various communities.

Area studies requires solid basic studies based on in-depth field researches, as well as studies that deploy a bird’s-eye perspective essential to analyzing worldwide phenomena caused by multiple causes. In order to confront these regional and global issues, we need to establish a secure framework that would promote cross-disciplinarily collaboration among researchers and enhance already-existing networks. JCAS aims to function as a dynamic organism to facilitate these goals.

JCAS makes it possible to construct firm inter-boundary networks among academic, business and governmental circles and to conduct effective trans-regional project research through the sharing of academic and technical resources accumulated in cooperation with member organizations. JCAS also hopes to make an intellectual contribution to the public and it also designs future-oriented programs for postgraduate education and training schemes for next generations beyond existing structure.

CSEAS is one of the key institutions which initiated the establishment of JCAS and it is deeply committed to the promotion of its activities and administration.

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Special Interest Group for Area Studies Resource Sharing

Research Activities and Seminars

The Special Interest Group for Area Studies Resource Sharing was formed on December 16th, 2004, under the Japan Consortium for Area Studies. Due to its nature of the study, area study specialists obtain research materials in various languages and various formats including non-textual materials such as photos, maps, oral history, video recording, and etc. Though institutions or individuals have accumulated these materials along with the growth of area studies in Japan, not much are done in order to share these resources.

The intention for forming the Special Interest Group for Area Studies Resource Sharing is to change this situation by providing a common place for discussing and exchanging ideas for promoting resource sharing among area studies information specialists, researchers, and students. The actual activities of the group are such as open forum on various aspects of recourse sharing, overseas study tour, and training session. These acuitivities are open to anyone who is interested in the topic.

The current themes of the Special Interest Group for Area Studies Resource Sharing are as follows: recourse sharing, information on publications and publishers of the world, multi-language processing, multimedia resource, copyright laws, digital archiving, archive management and sharing, recourse sharing and education, implication of area studies collection building within the historical context of the object country/region, human recourses development, etc.

Contacts:

owner-jcas_infoshare@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Y. Tonai (The Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University)
Y. Kitamura (The Center for Southeast Asian Stuides, Kyoto University)

Special Interest Group on Area Informatics

Research Activities and Seminars

Progress in information and communications technology (ICT) has led to the increased use of information technology in all the fields of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The successful incorporation of ICT in research within these disciplines has reached a point where a single research field has evolved. That field is now known as informatics.

Area studies also encompass the fields of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences and the value of using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) in area studies research has become more and more apparent. But more remains to be done: the use of informatics in area studies is still in its infancy. But by consciously integrating informatics to other research methods, area studies will be able to deepen existing research as well as develop new approaches to knowledge accumulation and evaluation.

It is in recognition of this growing importance of the link between area studies and informatics that CSEAS, and a host of other institutions, have taken in the initiative in organizing the Japan Consortium for Area Studies/SIG (Special Interest Group) on Area Informatics. The goal of this group is to work towards creating and building up a new discipline which we call Area Informatics. One of the first step, SIG has taken is to provide a venue for sharing knowledge of case studies and research results obtained through the application of information and communications technology to area studies. In addition the SIG also intends to promote the fusion and collaboration between area studies and informatics in order to raise current discussions on the systematization of this new discipline to a new level.

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