2022 Fall Riceball Seminar. NOW STARTING!

Red spider lilies known as Higanbana are blooming along the paths between the rice paddies, giving us a feeling of autumn even in the late summer heat. Today I would like to introduce the “Riceball Seminars” to be held at each campus in Ritsumeikan University.

What is Riceball Seminar?

Have you ever heard of the “Riceball Seminar” of Ritsumeikan University? If you are familiar with college sports, you have heard of the “Rice Bowl” or the “Japan Championship Rice Bowl” which is the annual national championship of American football held in Japan every January. Or maybe you haven’t!
(Our American football team, the Ritsumeikan Panthers has been away from the Student Championship title for a while, but we are looking forward to a breakthrough this season!)

Well, the Riceball Seminars are a series of weekly lunchtime events organized by the Research Office on each campus, where participants can listen to short research presentations during their lunch breaks while enjoying food such as rice balls. The presenters are mainly post doctors who are just starting their careers, PhD students, and graduate students. These events are also useful for undergraduates students who are considering working at a company but are still uncertain about their future, and it gives them an opportunity to learn about going to the graduate school as one of their career options. Riceball Seminars help researchers who haven’t had much experience in presenting their research at conferences to gain experience in making presentations that are easy to understand for the audience who are not so familiar with the topics.

Unfortunately, since the covid outbreak, these seminars have been held online, so we haven’t been able to offer the participants riceballs, but each Research Office has made various attempts to attract more students to their seminars such as offering unique themes like setting and charging the Co-op prepaid card the equivalent to the cost of riceballs.

＜We are looking forward to starting face-to-face Riceball Seminars again! ＞

AJI members are also on the stage

You can now check the schedule for the 2022 Fall Riceball Seminar and its presenters at Osaka Ibaraki Campus (OIC), the home of Asia-Japan Research Institute at: (https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/ro_oic/event/?event_id=40) This time, three presenters from AJI will be presenting: Dr Lee Jinhye (Senior Researcher) who is researching about the Korean Diaspora living in Kazakhstan; Mr. Shunto Kimura (Graduate School of Human Science) whose research is about Mothers' Parenting Stress and their Interactions with their Children and their Development; and Dr Alpraditia Malik (Senior Researcher) who specializes in Urban Policymaking in Indonesia.

＜From the left: Dr Lee Jinhye, Mr. Shunto Kimura and Dr Alpraditia Malik＞

OIC has social science departments such as the College of Comprehensive Psychology and the College of Policy Science, and for this reason the presentation themes at OIC are likely to elaborate the issues of the current days. Thirty minutes may not be enough time to present all the challenges the researchers are facing or to describe their research in depth, but we all try to make the event as easy and fun as possible for the participants by lowering the bar to understanding the research in the first place. As a staff member of the research support team, I couldn’t be happier if even one student in the audience decided to pursue a career in research .

These events are open to everyone including those who are not Ritsumeikan members. Please join our seminars. We look forward to seeing you there!

Links

2022 Fall Riceball Seminar at OIC
https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/ro_oic/event/?event_id=40

Riceball Seminar at Kinugasa Campus Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/riceballseminar/

2022 Fall Riceball Seminar at BKC
https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/events/detail/?id=1193

Asia-Japan Research Institute Profile of next generations
https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/aji/young_researcher/profiles/

AJI presents Frontier Seminars by next generations of researchers every month. They provide us with opportunities to raise our awareness of current issues with one another through the ensuing discussions.
https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/aji/research/seminar/

Ritsumeikan Panthers official website
https://www.ritsumeikanpanthers.com