Daiwa Scholars 2021
2021 Daiwa Scholars at a briefing in Regent's Park, June 2021
The Foundation is delighted to announce the six Daiwa Scholars 2021.
Announcing the new Daiwa Scholars, Jason James, Director General of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, said:
“On 17 March we held final interviews (by Zoom) for our flagship Daiwa Scholarship programme, selecting six. This programme welcomes candidates from any field other than Japanese studies, so the new Scholars covered a typically wide range – a music technologist, a materials scientist, a drug trial quality assurance manager, a financial journalist, and budding academics in history of art and archaeology, and comparative literature. We look forward to supporting all of them during their scholarships, and will follow their careers thereafter with great interest.”
Daiwa Scholars were due to depart for Tokyo in September 2021.
In light of Covid-19 and Japan’s strict entry regulations, the Scholars have had to postpone the start of the programme in Tokyo from autumn 2021 until autumn 2022.
They departed for Tokyo on 5 September 2022.
Their profiles (at the time of selection) with photographs can be found via the following link.
About the scholars
Carlos Davey
Carlos was awarded a BSc in Physics by the University of Birmingham in 2020, and completed an MSc in Acoustics and Music Technology at the University of Edinburgh in 2021. He has a research interest in the links between Quantum Mechanics and sound, as well as in the development of gesturally controlled instruments, which he aims to explore during his postgraduate degree or later career. He grew up enamoured of the dreamlike quality of Joe Hisaishi’s scores to the Studio Ghibli films and fascinated by contemporary Japanese music including electronic music, noise-rock, jazz and hip-hop. As a Physics graduate, sound engineer and musician (classical guitar and music production) he aspires to a career with one of the leading audio-technology companies in Japan, which lead the field in developing new hardware-based digital instruments.
Julian Hanton
Julian completed an MEng in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield in 2021. Building on his MEng, he would like to pursue a PhD focused on hierarchically-structured composite materials with a view to applying his knowledge to industry. He travelled to Japan for three weeks in 2013, visiting Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. The trip sparked an interest in Japanese animated films, particularly those by Studio Ghibli, and while in Hiroshima he visited the Mazda automotive factory, which proved inspirational in his decision to pursue engineering as a direction for his studies. He is interested in the work of companies like Toyota Motor Company which are heavily investing in research into composites, and its recent carbon-composite battery electrodes are of particular interest, as he aspires to becoming a leader in researching these novel materials.
Georgina Harrison
Genie was awarded a BA in English Literature in 2020 by the University of Cambridge, where she also completed an MPhil in American Literature in 2021. As a child, Genie’s interest in Japan was inspired by the experiences of her cousins who grew up in Tokyo and introduced her to Studio Ghibli films. It was while working at a literary agency and a bookshop that she read the novels of Sayaka Murata and Hiromi Itō who she felt addressed womanhood with great lucidity. She is also interested in experimental translation, and has enjoyed exploring UK-American and Japanese avant-garde artistic interchange, notably Ezra Pound’s support of Katue Kitasono’s VOU Club and Kenneth Rexroth’s translations of Japanese poetry. She aspires to pursue a career in publishing rights, specifically promoting Asian writers in the UK while also increasing the visibility of female Japanese authors.
Celia St Clair
Celia was awarded a BSc in Biomedical Sciences by King’s College London in 2015, and is currently working as the Quality Assurance Manager, Cancer Clinical Trials Unit at University College London Hospital. Her interest in Japan began through her involvement with judo, in which she competed at an international level. She also enjoys the literary works of Kōbō Abe and Haruki Murakami, as well as Japanese films and television series. She is keen to learn from Japan as it is a renowned hub for improvements and advancements in cancer medicine, and to further her knowledge of the Japanese universal health care insurance system. She aspires to facilitate the early diagnosis of cancers by widening access to diagnostic medical trials to those considered high risk, and also to improve the availability of potentially life-saving novel agents by enabling more patients who have already been diagnosed with advanced disease to participate in trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of investigational medicinal products.
Gabriela Mancey-Jones
Gabriela was awarded a BA in Modern Languages (French) by the University of Oxford in 2019. She developed an interest in the contemporary visual and material culture of Japan while studying History of Art and Archaeology at the Sorbonne for a year as part of her degree. This interest was enhanced by a ten-week internship at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where she researched and archived a large donation of slides on Japan from the anthropologist Professor Joy Hendry. Following a postgraduate degree, she aspires to work in academia in the field of comparative History of Art and Archaeology, with a focus on East Asian art.
Madeleine Taylor
Madeleine was awarded a BA in Classics by the University of Oxford in 2018, and went on to complete an MA in Magazine Journalism at City, University of London in 2019. She has worked as Editor of Institutional Asset Manager, for which she wrote online news and feature articles, and is currently writing for Investors’ Chronicle magazine (Financial Times Group). She spent part of her early childhood in Tokyo, leaving Japan when she was six. She aspires to a role as a correspondent for an international financial news outlet reporting on Japan’s financial system and the social realities it creates for people, as a leading indicator for the rest of the world. Japan offers a unique vantage point as it was an early adopter of negative interest rates and quantitative easing, subsequently used in European economies in response to the twin shocks of the global financial crisis and Covid 19.