This month the Todai ISS social science dissertation workshop will meet on Thursday, April 26 to talk with Phoebe Holdgruen.* She has a PhD in political science from Heinrich-Heine-University of Duesseldorf and is currently a fellow at DIJ getting started on her second project.

Phoebe is interested in active political participation:
who gets involved and why, and particularly the effects it has on them. In particular, does participation correlate with feelings of well being, or even happiness? She has chosen to concentrate on people who are active in two important post-3.11 movements, against nuclear power and protection against radiation in the environment and food. The project is at a very early stage but she has been doing preliminary interviewing. She finds it is hard to get people to talk about how they are personally affected by participating; they are more prone to explain social problems and solutions. Phoebe is hoping that workshop members will have ideas about how to deal with this problem as well suggestions about research design and so forth.

The workshop is mainly for social scientist graduate students and recent PhDs of all nationalities, but guests are always welcome. If convenient, please let me know if you will be coming. The following meeting of the workshop will be May 24.

John Campbell (jccamp[at]umich.edu)

*Meetings of the Shaken Social Science Dissertation Workshop start at 12 pm and go to 1:30 and sometimes beyond. The Institute of Social Science provides coffee and tea and you are welcome to bring lunch. The location is a seminar room on the 5th floor in the Akamon General Research (Sougou Kenkyuu) Building. The building is down a little passage to the right after you come through Akamon. It is Bldg 37 on this map:

http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/about/documents/Hongo_CampusMap_E.pdf