The main objective of the project is to strengthen Indo-Pacific studies. As the broad region of Indo-Pacific is getting more and more attention both from policy-makers and scholars, there is a growing demand for better understanding of the region which is provided by the growing research area of Indo-Pacific studies. For the purpose of the project Indo-Pacific studies are defined as a multidisciplinary research area focusing on the political, economic and social developments in the Indo-Pacific region. The concept of Indo-Pacific is derived originally from geography and comprises the areas of two oceans: Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean with exclusion of the coast of Americas and polar regions. Indo-Pacific spans from India and Pakistan, east through Southeast Asian states to China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. There is a world-wide need to build and strengthen Indo-Pacific studies. This demand for deepening of the understanding of the region can be justified as follows. Firstly, it is the region inhabited by over 1/3 of the humankind. Secondly, the countries of the region are developing very rapidly and their impact on global affairs is increasing. From the EU perspective the region is especially important for EU because it represents the biggest export market for the European products. 5 EU HEIs and 2 HEIs from India and Japan will collaborate for 31 months, involving 22 scholars to obtain the following OUTPUTS: -1 curriculum report with recommendations (O1)-22 podcasts recorded to popularize science (O3)-1 Digital, Open Access handbook (O2) with 22 chapters including: glossary, learning outcomes, smart index, exercises, cases, assignments, future reading list, follow-up questions + 1 annex with guidelines for teacher and a guide for self-study (O4)-7 partners will update their curricula and teaching techniques for IPS at MA level-21 educators trained in teaching IPS, will do field trainings in the EU (C7), India (C5) or Japan (C6)-240 students will test handbook chapters in India and Japan (C5 and C6)-90 students will test chapters in the EU (C7)-4 dissemination events OUTCOMES-changing study programs in the EU to establish and support IPS-improving didactic potential of teachers of Indo-Pacific Studies by providing them with innovative didactic tools, competences and recommendations-increasing the number of students specialized in IPS (through teaching) – 350 MA /yearly-increasing the number of scholars specialized in IPS (also through self-study) – 100/yearly-increasing awareness among the general public about the importance of the Indo-Pacific Region – 150 during, 4000 after project has ended.Specific for EU partners:-enhanced networking opportunities for partner institutions and staff-gather teaching materials from the region (C5 C6)All these outcomes are self-reinforcing like a virtuous circle: IPS programs will be active (and relevant) for years to come considering the rise of the Indo-Pacific region regarding global capital flows, trade, services, political influence, development, migration, regional security challenges and global challenges like multipolar great power rivalry (beyond the US-China rivalry), ecology and climate change. These factors in turn will create a growing need (pull factor) that will ensure a stable increase of new specialists on the region, which in turn will reinforce the human capital at HEIs (in the EU and beyond) to study the region, and engage with it professionally, legitimizing its pivotal role in global affairs. This same growing need will attract future funding by policy-makers for HEIs that have successfully adopted IPS. This will be a push factor for those Asia studies that have not conformed to ISP yet and do not focus on the interlinkages of Asia’s ever increasingly connected subregions.Since all outputs are tangible, and available through OPEN ACCESS on various online platforms or e-resource databases (O2). These platforms will receive funding for their upkeep by the coordinator - and the handbook availability in online databases will be guaranteed (by legal contract) by collaborating with a renowned publisher.The MONEY-VALUE of the handbook, which will of course be free in its digital version, will without doubt outcompete many of its future competitors for years to come, especially since at the moment NO handbook on this topic is available. EISIPS scholarly expertise that will be put into its development, cannot be outdone by single institutions, and will not easily be outdone by consortia either without similar funding opportunities

The proposed new network will generate interdisciplinary research collaboration and bring together mechatronics/robotics researches from the UK and Japan, to share experiences and formalise discussions for defining a common strategy for future R&D and collaborations at all level of research, teaching and technology transfer. Such a network is vital if the different communities in Japan and UK are to work together for mutual benefit. The network will also act as a knowledge base from the existing mechatronics/robotics community to create a new research community in human adaptive mechatronics able to address the many common challenges (e.g. Pollution / CO2 issue, Aging population issue, etc) in UK and Japan. In particular, the network will explore a number of key challenges: such as a) Investigating the modelling of a man-machine system that explicitly includes all necessary functions of humans as machine operators with sufficient accuracy; b) Implementation of human adaptive behaviour in autonomous systems; c) Application of human adaptive mechatronics to upgrade UK high-tech products; d) Development of human adaptive mechatronics into biomedical applications; e) Development of mathematics to model and analysis human adaptive mechatronic processes in productions.

Covid-19 has upset development progress and paradigms in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan. Yet the pandemic also has created new opportunities to innovate, evaluate and redirect policy and practice across rural communities and customary livelihoods in these steppe nations. To address post-Covid-19 challenges, experienced Japanese and UK researchers will combine their expertise, shared experience and insights to explore, evaluate and inform inclusive and sustainable policy responses in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan. As lower-middle income countries, the pandemic intersects with complex environmental and socio-economic factors impacting traditional rural mobile pastoralists and agro-pastoralist livelihoods which are centers for food production and cultural heritage. The project brings together eight Japanese universities with the University of Oxford, building on over 77 years of combined experience working in Mongolia and Central Asia. Original field research will center on rural livelihoods, governance and community engagement to understand the multi-scalar socio-economic and geographic dimensions of Covid-19 responses in rural areas. Challenges include citizen engagement and participation in decision-making, local government capacity, trade and markets, access and availability of information and public services, including health, restrictions on movement and financial support prioritising sustainable economic activity. By advancing a collaborative research agenda, our project aims to advance civic engagement, democratic participation, social well-being and an inclusive Covid recovery through evidence-based, collaborative and multi-stakeholder approaches and will empower researchers at every stage of their career through a comprehensive capacity building and skills development programme. Joint research will identify post-pandemic opportunities to address key issues, transition and improve rural livelihoods, governance and support services. Through fieldwork-based evidence and engagement activities, the project will seek to empower rural communities as they transition into post-Covid response. Strengthened communication (ICT) and markets, sustainable lives and movement and more resilient and equitable systems will be emphasised. This includes opportunities for women, respect for herding and farming, viable education and lifestyle opportunities to build inclusive and enduring rural societies.

This research project has two parallel objectives. One is a collaborative scholarly enterprise among researchers and institutions in Japan and the UK, which aims to analyse the cultural and social impact of art and literary salons and collective creation of art (gassaku) in early modern Japan, in particular of the Kyoto-Osaka region during 1780-1880. The second objective is pragmatic in this era under the profound impact of Covid-19, which is to explore how efficiently and productively we could conduct a Japan-UK research project by keeping physical traveling between the two countries to a bare minimum. In other words, in pursuit of academic research, we will at the same time examine the effectiveness of using digital online technologies for remote collaboration, taking our research project as a case study. The core team members are from the Art Research Center (ARC) of Ritsumeikan University, Kansai University (KU), the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the British Museum (BM) and SOAS University of London. The group has been formed through previous academic collaborations funded by UK's ESRC Networking Grant (2019) and grants from Ritsumeikan and Kansai Universities. Based on extant primary materials, it is evident that the collaborative creation of art was common in late Edo-period Japan. Such artworks typically took the forms of paintings, surimono (privately commissioned colour woodblock prints with poems and images) and illustrated books. They were often produced in the context of cultural salons, which were open to people of all social levels, professionals and amateurs, men and women. In contrast to the celebrated artists and authors, however, the identities of most of these individual participants are unacknowledged and remain unknown. Our research will investigate the membership and scale of salon groups and networks through the analysis of a large corpus of over 5,000 primary materials held at the BM, KU and the Paul Berry private collection in Kyoto, the data of which will be input into an ARC database. The research has three main stages: 1) Digitisation; 2) text transcription and input; and 3) data analysis using manual and digital methods. To enable the team to access the corpus objects remotely, the project will digitise them, and the members will transcribe the texts in the objects. The image and text data on the ARC database will allow the members online access for the analysis stage. To overcome the challenge of the large corpus, the project has assembled a team of core and associate researchers in Japan and the UK, who are committed to data input and analysis. We will hold online workshops and symposia to discuss individual members' research based on the evidence found during the digitisation and transcription process. This data will complement the ARC's existing system of databases on Japanese material culture. Through analyses and online study workshops, we will prepare for dissemination of our results, consisting of a) a bilingual edited volume with contributions from the project members in line with the project's aims; b) an exhibition at the BM in 2024 and an accompanying catalogue aimed at a wider audience; and c) public launch of the database of the project's corpus objects hosted by the ARC, all of which will form a lasting contribution to Japanese studies worldwide. Finally, d) we will produce a report of our assessment of remote international collaboration strategies.

The proposed programme will investigate the structure and electronic properties of indium nitride (InN) surfaces and interfaces. This work is both a natural continuation of our successful research on the surface electronic properties of InN and takes our research forward into new and exciting areas. In addition to investigating the novel surface structures of what is considered to be the last unexplored III-V semiconductor material, we will also study a wide range of InN-containing interfaces which will pave the way for the material to be used in new or improved (opto)electronic devices. The optical and electrical properties of InN, and its alloys with other nitrides make it extremely attractive for use in the next generation of devices, including lasers, sensors, high-brightness light emitting diodes, high-efficiency solar cells, and high-speed transistors.Surface reconstruction refers to the process by which atoms at the surface of a crystal assume a different structure from that of the bulk. Due to the large size difference between indium and nitrogen, InN is likely to exhibit novel surface structures which do not conform to the established guiding principles of surface reconstruction of traditional III-V semiconductors, such as gallium arsenide. This has been confirmed in our preliminary study of one crystal orientation of InN, where, unusually, the surface was terminated by over three layers of indium, including a topmost laterally contracted and rotated indium layer. The detailed arrangements of the atoms at surfaces and interfaces have important implications for both epitaxial growth behaviour and device properties.Consequently, the development of novel semiconductor devices is intimately related to fundamental investigations of interface physics. With continuing miniaturisation in semiconductor device technology, the interface itself is increasingly becoming the device. To fully realize the potential of InN-based low dimensional devices, understanding of both the surface and interface properties is essential. Our research programme will employ a comprehensive range of surface- and interface-sensitive experimental techniques to probe the structural and electronic properties of both clean InN surfaces and a range of technologically important InN-containing interfaces.