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The Graduate School of Letters, Osaka Public University opened the Humanities-based Interdisciplinary Research Center (HIRC) on April 1, 2025. The HIRC, based at Osaka Metropolitan University's Morinomiya Campus, will actively promote interdisciplinary research aimed at integrating a variety of academic fields, mainly in the humanities, across the humanities and sciences.
The HIRC will be established as a developmental reorganization of the Urban-Culture Research Center (UCRC), which was established in 2003, and will aim to conduct “interdisciplinary research” in the true sense of the term by actively interacting with other academic disciplines while remaining grounded in the existing disciplines of the humanities. In order to achieve this goal, the UCRC is committed to cultivating a culture of interdisciplinarity. To this end, we will continue to build on the assets cultivated at the UCRC, while actively building collaborative relationships with various research departments within the university and with various research institutions at home and abroad. HIRC pursues academic research on human beings and their society, history, psychology, education, thought and culture, diverse languages, literature, communication, etc., from a variety of perspectives and methods, while actively building collaborative relationships.
The main purpose of HIRC is to support research and education within the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences and to lead related projects, but it will also serve as a base for collaboration with many other departments of the university. The HIRC will consist of full-time faculty members of the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, HIRC researchers, and special researchers (who may also hold concurrent positions with HIRC researchers), and will support the research activities of young researchers and engage in interdisciplinary research, international joint research, and regional cooperation.
In addition to basic activities such as the publication of the journal “Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities,” joint projects (symposiums, surveys) between faculty members and researchers, and the construction of various databases and archives, the HIRC will maintain the HIRC Research Fellow system to pursue partnerships with new research fields and continue its activities as a platform for advanced academic exchange.
The UCRC, the predecessor of HIRC, was established in 2003 as a core research and education center following the adoption (2002-07) of the 21st Century COE Program “Humanities Research for the Creation of Urban Culture” applied by the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka City University. At that time, sub-centers were established in Shanghai, Beijing, Hamburg, London, Bangkok, and Yogyakarta to serve as centers for international joint research, education, and exchange. Over the course of five years, these efforts resulted in more than 160 publications and hundreds of articles by project promoters, collaborators, and (young) researchers. Themes included comparative urban cultural history, tourism studies, cultural resource theory, and intellectual studies, and we have achieved significant results by attempting to integrate a historical approach to the city with a contemporary cultural theory perspective.
In 2006, the Urban Research Plaza, a university-wide organization, was established to utilize the research accumulated to date to tackle various contemporary urban issues in a practical manner. The Plaza's project was selected for the Global COE Program that began in 2007, and its theme, “Rebuilding Cities for Cultural Creation and Social Inclusion,” succeeded the 21st Century COE Program of the UCRC. In addition, the educational project “International School” promoted by the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences was adopted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as part of the “Support Program for Improving Graduate School Education” in 2007, and as a division of UCRC, we have implemented various support projects to improve young researchers' ability to communicate internationally.
With the relocation of the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences to the Morinomiya Campus, HIRC was established as a developmental dissolution of the UCRC with the aim of further developing the active education and research activities that have been conducted at the UCRC on a university-wide scale.
The Humanities-based Interdisciplinary Research Center (HIRC) aims to serve as a hub for interdisciplinary research centered on the humanities by connecting the work of faculty across the diverse specialized fields of the Graduate School of Letters, while promoting collaboration both within the university and with institutions in Japan and abroad.
What is a "human being"? What are the history, society, and culture that human beings have shaped? The humanities are, at their core, an intellectual inquiry into the essence of humanity through such questions. It is "human beings" that advance academic research—including in the sciences and engineering—as well as technological development, and who apply these advancements in contemporary society; in this sense, the significance of the humanities is being called into question once again.
While HIRC was established in 2025, it will effectively begin its full operations in 2026 with the appointment of full-time faculty members, together with seven core members who are jointly affiliated with their respective disciplines and HIRC. Toward the research center that HIRC aims to become, I would like us first to engage our new members in careful discussion about the organizational framework we should build and the kinds of collaborative research we should develop, so that we can gradually establish a solid institutional foundation. At the same time, I believe it will be important for us to consider and organize interdisciplinary events that can help us articulate and share this vision more widely. It is my hope that the development of HIRC will be supported not only by the core members of its administration, but by the Graduate School of Letters as a whole, working together to nurture it into a distinctive research center that reflects the strengths of our school.
Director of HIRC: KISHIMOTO Naofumi