Studying at the Department of
International Studies

My job is to challenge Master's and PhD students to generate compelling research questions, and to define clear research objectives. 

Calendar Schedule
A standard Master's program with us takes 2 years.
Here is a rough outline of the major tasks you will be assigned under my supervision:

First year, 1st semester

Welcome to Campus!

At the University of Tokyo, you have access to a wide range of tools and resources that are provided to all students and researchers. As you settle in to choose your lectures, try and take advantages of the resources that will help you enjoy a fulfilling student life. 

Take various lectures and familiarize yourself with approaches for studying development issues. We will have weekly meetings where your classmates take turns giving presentations on the type of research they want to conduct. If you already know what kind of data and tools you need to conduct your analysis, that is great news!

Research Goal: Define research objectives/questions that will allow you to conduct research on the theme that matters to you. 

First year, 2nd semester

Picking a research theme is not as easy as it sounds. You need to read and learn a lot to be able to confidently answer the question: "what kind of research do you do?" 

It's time to put some structure to all of the information and knowledge you have consumed so far. What have other researchers said about your topic? What is known and not known? Where does your research play a part in all of these studies? You need to be able answer these questions, and this is what we mean when we say you need to conduct a Literature Review. 

Research Goal: Finalize your research questions in preparation for a mid-term research presentation. 

Second year, 1st semester

In the first month of your second year, you will need to complete a mid-term research evaluation by a) submitting  an abstract summarizing your research progress/proposal, and b) completing a short research presentation and q&a session in front of all departmental faculty members. 

With research questions in place, the methodology you will use to conduct your analysis should become clear: How will you analyze what kind of data? 

Research Goal: Identify appropriate methodologies and implement your analysis. 

Second year, 2nd semester

In the remaining 6 months, you need to finalize your analytical results in order to prepare and defend your thesis.

You should have collected/compiled your data by now, and began your analysis. If all went well, you have your results, and you have an answer to your research questions! But of course, things may not be going as smoothly as you had hoped. Sometimes, (...maybe most times?) you do not find the exact answer you were looking for. 

But, that does not mean you wasted your time. What it usually means, is that we may have been asking the wrong questions. You should refine your research questions and go back to the data. The more you do this, the better. By defining the scope or your research more clearly, we will be able to highlight the significance of what you learned throughout this whole process. 

Research Goal: Submit an approved thesis and complete a final presentation to defend your results to faculty members. 


...After successfully submitting and defending an approved thesis, you are now eligible for graduation.  Two years went by so quickly!  There are so many questions left in your mind about your topic, and so many things you would have done differently knowing what you know now...maybe you should consider a PhD, so you can find an answer to the most fundamental questions that you now realize will require more research to understand. 

A Graduate Thesis:
the components of a research paper

Every student is different, and so every project should be unique.
However, all research papers should contain the following sections:

Introduction/Background
　Why is your topic important/interesting?

Objectives/Research Questions
　What will you do?

Literature Review
　How did other researchers try to do it?

Methods and Data
　How did you do it?

Findings/Results
　What did you find?

Discussion/Implications
　"OK, so what?" How can we learn from your findings?
　What are the limitations of your study?

Conclusion
　What's your final message? 

Of course, there are always some exceptions and differences in how these sections might be presented or organized. Please interpret this as a simplified summary of the average case. 

Examples:
Research topics of students I have supervised