Spring Seminar and Meeting with Natasha Fijn in Kobe

Written by Takahiro Tomita

From 24th to 25th June 2024, the seminar ‘Multispecies Influenza: An Environmental Humanities Approach to Zoonotic Disease’ was held at Kobe University. Dr Natasha Fijn, Associate Professor at the Australian National University and Director of its Mongolian Institute, was the featured speaker. We had some concerns about how many people would attend the seminar, as it was being held on a Monday evening at the start of the week. As it turned out, there were around 40 participants from Japan and overseas, including PPIA members. It was a very fruitful and intensive seminar.

On the meeting’s second day, Fijn and PPIA members met in person and online. The hybrid, free exchange of research ideas and topics discussed future collaboration. After a brief introduction to the PPIA project by Takahiro Ozaki, members including Ariell Ahearn, Troy Sternberg, Zalina Enikeeva, Akira Kamimura, Buho Hoshino, Takahiro Tomita, Moe Terao, Chieko Hirota and Ozaki introduced their PPIA research topics. Future challenges and a free exchange of ideas from different academic fields followed. At the meeting, they also shared information about the Oxford Desert Conference to be held in March 2025 and the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences World Congress. We promised to meet again at one of these conferences.

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