EVENT

Tuesday, 6 January 2026, 14:00-15:00 JST

This webinar provides a clear and accessible overview of the EU AI Act’s Article 50 transparency obligations, which require users to be able to recognize when text, images, video, or audio have been generated or edited by AI. We will explain key requirements—such as disclosure of AI chatbot interactions, watermarking or metadata for synthetic content, notices on emotion recognition and biometric categorization systems, and deepfake labeling—highlighting their practical relevance in the generative AI era. Crucially, these duties apply not only to AI “providers” but also to “deployers” who integrate AI into services or content offered in the EU, and may extend to professionals and individual creators using AI commercially, while purely private hobby use is excluded. We will also cover the ongoing development of a Transparency Code of Practice (CoP) in the EU, its expected role as a de facto compliance benchmark, and the issues that may arise for organizations choosing alternative approaches. This session is especially for those who have assumed the rules do not concern them, offering a chance to understand the true reach of Article 50 and consider appropriate preparation.

Wednesday, January 7, 2026, 14:00-15:00 JST

In economics, there is a well-known idea that new technologies and ideas replace older ones, driving progress. This concept, known as "creative destruction," was a central theme in the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics. In contrast, physics teaches us the principle of conservation: nothing is lost, everything simply changes form. So, is economic progress truly about destruction—or is it more about transformation? In this lecture, a physicist and an economist will explore the differences between these perspectives, and discuss topics such as sustainable growth and the power of human imagination, in a way that is accessible to all.

Wednesday, 14 January 14:00-15:00

The body politic has, since the Middle Ages, provided an enduring analogy in Europe for describing the ‘right’ kind of political organisation. In this talk I explain how this analogy was turned inside out by the scientific discoveries made around the real body in16th and 17th centuries Europe.

Tuesday, 13 June 2023, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Climate change, industrial development, and population growth continuously increase the need for freshwater worldwide. Unconventional wastewater and saline sources must be tapped to reduce the stress on natural resources. However, producing freshwater from unconventional streams requires significantly more energy than traditional ways. While energy needs will always be high, innovative methods will rely on renewable energy, reduce the process complexity, and increase the socio-economic feasibility of desalination. This lecture discusses challenges and opportunities of these methods and the water-energy nexus.

Monday, 5 June 2023, 5:00 - 7:00pm JST

Plastic is essential for so many of the things we value in today’s world. But excessive and unplanned use of plastic worsens the conditions driving climate change and threatens the land, the seas and the lives of animals and humans.

Speakers on this panel will highlight issues including the chemical challenges plastic poses for the environment; the lives of waste-pickers who minimize the harm caused by discarded plastic; the science and economics confronting small-scale, local reuse of plastic; government mechanisms to coordinate the containment of plastic; and the dangers to animals and humans of micro-plastics in diverse forms.

Friday, 2 June 2023, 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm JST

The Anthropocene—the geological era dominated by human activities—is often associated with the climate change, ecological crisis, the sixth extinction, etc., or in brief, with an apocalyptic end. The recent acceleration of digital technology added more strength to the eschatological imagination which underlines the philosophy of history in the past centuries. In this sense, the Anthropocene is posed as a problem of modernity and it consequently calls for a new movement of overcoming modernity, which we can identify with the recent efforts of anthropologists such as Philippe Descola, Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, Bruno Latour among others, who want to undo the modern concept of nature. This talk will address this impasse of modernity and introduce what I call technodiversity as a response.

Monday, 29 May 2023, 3:00 - 4:00 pm (JST)

This talk deals with two interrelated phenomena in Japanese writing practices: (1) the integration of loanwords and (2) the romanization of Japanese vocabulary. I will argue that the two phenomena are in fact complementary, resulting in a high degree of hybridity between what is native and what is foreign.

Monday, 29 May 2023, 4:00-5:30PM

The use of language in public space is an important indicator of identity, which shows how languages are valued in a given community in both practical and symbolic manners. In this workshop, we will explore how identity is visually manifested in the physical and digital landscapes through the examination of the language of public signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, and so on.

Thursday, 25 May 2023, 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm JST

International human rights law guarantees a ‘right to participate in and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications’. The lecture will explain why the so-called ‘right to science’ has largely stayed inactive, and what its recently-rekindled participatory dimension implies for its right-holders and duty-bearers. It proposes to interpret the right to science as a public good to help revise the predominant approach to science as an individual, ahistorical and acultural enterprise, and reverse the trend towards its privatization and commodification.

Monday, 22 May 2023, 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm JST

Professor Andrew Gordon is studying the public history of industrial heritage, beginning with the UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage Sites of Japan’s industrial revolution. He is also interested in sites of industrial heritage which have not been (and probably will not be) nominated to UNESCO. His talk will focus on two such sites. One is old and famous: the Ashio Copper Mine and Refinery. Another is Japan’s newest “industrial heritage site”: the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Monday, 15 May 2023, 5:00-6:30 pm

The European Union is about to implement the world’s first carbon border adjustment mechanism: a charge on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. Advocates see this as a major advance in the fight against climate change. Opponents see it as opening the door to protectionism. What are the arguments and evidence? Should other countries do the same?

Tuesday, 25 April 2023 4:00-5:30 pm

Increases in computer power and computational tools have transformed economic research, as well as many other sciences. This talk will discuss the ways that growing computer power has changed economics and finance, and how recent developments such as deep learning, artificial intelligence and machine learning might transform it in the future.

Saturday, 22 April 2023, 4:00-5:30 pm (Doors open: 3:30 pm)

During the last 122 years, almost 1000 Nobel Prizes have been awarded in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The Nobel Laureates and their great achievements are a tremendous source of inspiration, including for cancer research aiming at understanding why and how we get cancer, and how it can be treated, which is the theme of the presentation.

Wednesday, 19 April 2023, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm JST

Is our language inundated by loanwords? Or is it being enriched by absorbing foreign vocabulary? We often hear such discussions in contemporary Japan. Loanwords and Japanese Identity: Inundating or Absorbed? explores the relationship between language and identity through an examination of public attitudes towards lexical borrowing in the Japanese language.

Monday, 17 April 2023, 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm (JST)

The embedded notion of the inseparable relationship between the nation, the language, and the people has shaped Japan’s language policy. In this talk, Dr.Kayoko Hashimoto (The University of Queensland) discusses how learners’ identity has been constructed in so-called “English education” in Japan and how learners’ identity has been assumed in the promotion of Japanese language teaching overseas.