Akihiro Kinda, president of the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) and Rick Rylance, chief executive of the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council signed a new agreement to continue their collaboration on January 25, 2011 at the AHRC headquarters in the UK. The agreement was concluded in light of the expiration of an earlier agreement between NIHU and AHRC to cooperate in academic activities. The preceding agreement was concluded in October 2007 and resulted in a number of research exchange and collaboration activities over the years.

In order to promote information exchange and academic research in the arts and humanities, a common objective of NIHU and AHRC, under the new agreement, both parties agreed to cooperate in areas such as academic networking activities, graduate student and early career researcher exchange, and cooperation with peer reviews.

With the new agreement, early career researchers both in Japan and the UK will now also be able to participate in the academic exchange program. This is in addition to an existing academic exchange program that enables placements of outstanding graduate students from the UK in one of the six NIHU institutes.

UK AHRC Chief Executive visits NIHU

The United Kingdom’s Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Chief Executive, Professor Rick Rylance, visited the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) in Minato-ku, Tokyo on May 25, 2015. A very genial discussion took place between Professor Rylance, President Narifumi Tachimoto and the NIHU members, to forge even stronger bonds of cooperation between NIHU and the AHRC. International programs between the humanities research institutes of the UK and Japan are expected to grow and prosper even further.