May 15, 2023

Director Shibata to speak at Antarctic Symposium held during Helsinki ATCM on May 29 !

The 45th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) will be convened on May 29 until June 9 in Helsinki, Finland. On the first day of the meeting, an Antactic public symposium, "Antarctica today, shared challenges for science and environmental protection in the final frontier" will be held, co-organised by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Univeristy of Lapland, Wilson Center, and Kobe PCRC. In the academic session, Director Shibata will speak on the importance of science and scientific evidence in the ATCM's legal and policy making. Prof. Koivurova will chair the panel, while Prof. Bastmeijer and Mr. Bloom will join as other speakers. All of them are Kobe PCRC guests in recent months. Our panel will be around 14:00 (20:00 in JST) and will be live streamed. Please click to download the program for details.

May 10, 2023

Kobe PCRC-JSPS fellowship for AY2024

Kobe PCRC will host JSPS fellows for academic year 2024 (arrival in Japan between April 2024 and March 2025). The JSPS fellowship offers generous financial support for various level of scholars from Postdocs, Mid-career to Professor Level with different length of stay in Japan. This fellowship is great opportunity, especially for early career researchers wishing to stay at Kobe PCRC to conduct relatively long-term collaborative research. For details, please see the Invitation as well as the JSPS Application Guidelines. Please note the deadline of some recruitments, including the 1st recruitment of Postdoctoral Fellowship is June 15th.

April 18, 2023

Invitation to graduate studies in international law at Kobe University, with Japanese government scholarship: deadline end of May

PCRC welcomes students who would like to pursue graduate level studies (Ph.D. in Laws) specializing in international law, including Arctic and Antarctic legal and policy studies, under the supervision of Professor Akiho Shibata, Director of the PCRC. For the enrollment in 2024, it is strongly recommended to simultaneously apply for the Japanese government scholarship by the end of May this year. Please click the image for the details. The useful information regarding GSICS, PCRC and MEXT scholarship are also available in our YouTube video.

March 30, 2023

Dr. Antsygina will talk on the delimitation scenarios for the Arctic extended continental shelves among Canada, Denmark and Russia

Dr. Ekaterina Antsygina, a Russian early career scholar, currently doing a postdoctoral research at University of Hamburg, Germany, will discuss likely scenarios for the future delimitation of the extended continental shelves in the Central Arctic Ocean between Canada, Denmark, and Russia, taking into account the most recent Russian submission to CLCS. This case is also interesting from the perspective of continuing Arctic cooperation under the law of the sea (UNCLOS) among the Arctic coastal states even during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

March 20, 2023

Two important articles by Director Shibata on Arctic governance analyzing the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

PCRC Director Shibata’s two peer-reviewed papers are published, both analyzing the implications of Russian invasion of Ukraine on the Arctic scientific cooperation and the Arctic governance structures more generally. First is co-authored with Prof. Alexander Sergunin and entitled: “Implementing the 2017 Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement: Challenges and Opportunities as regards Russian and Japan”, Yearbook of Polar Law, Vol.14. Second is co-authored with Prof. Timo Koivurova and is entitled: “After the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Can we still cooperate with Russia in the Arctic?", in Polar Record, Vol. 59 (Cambridge UP). Both are open access.