Academic Programs

About DIGES II (Social Sciences)

DESK has started expanding its support for postgraduate students specialising in such areas as law, economics and social sciences at a master's level as from 2003.

This expansion has given rise to DIGES II programme targeted at graduate students. In the past, DESK's activities used to be mainly centred around Komaba Campus, and it was difficult for Hongo Campus students to participate in its programmes. Although it is not easy to strengthen postgraduate education in the field of social science within the current budgetary constraint, an education programme (particularly focusing on social science field at a master course in DIGES II) started in April 2003. This education programme supports students by granting scholarships of DESK to postgraduate students taking registered courses under certain conditions. The registered courses include Master-level postgraduate courses concerned with contemporary Europe in the field of law, economics and social sciences.

Students wishing to participate in this programme register with DESK at the start of the academic year. The selection for the scholarship is made based on the application forms specifying the student's research proposal, specific research plan and its actual practice. Succeeding student receives the grant.

In addition, DESK invites visiting professors with a view to strengthening the postgraduate education of European studies in the special fields related closely with this programme. In 2003, Professor Takako Ueta of International Christian University, Tokyo, teaches graduates' seminar on European security, and Associate Professor Jiro Mizushima of Konan University, Kobe, tutors in European comparative politics as well as politics of the Netherlands.

Research Themes of the DIGES II (Social Sciences) Students

2005
・Refugees in the German Course of the Citizen’s College under the Immigration Act
・Strategy of the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) in the 1990s
・Everyday Life of the General Populace and Social Problems after World War II
・EU Policy toward the Third World ? Member State Preferences and Integration Logic
・Streams of Political Thought in the Interwar Period in Central and Eastern Europe: Jaszi Oscar’s Theory of Democracy
・Origins of Japan-Germany Relations after World War II
・West German Monetary Policy in the Process of Post-War European Integration
・A Historical and Ideological Study of the Formation and Development of the British Welfare State
・Human Security in Central Asia
・Changes in East European Legislation Regarding Street Children during the EU Accession Process

2004
・Immigrant Policy in France
・The Question of Unification with Serbia in Montenegro: between 1913 and 1914
・Schuman Plan and West German Steel Industry
・The Evolution of Strategic Culture and National Security Policy: A Case Study of Germany and Japan after the Cold War
・Environmental Policy in the European Union
・The Common and Foreign Security Policy of EU
・A History of Social Security in Upper Silesia
・The Second World War and the Swiss Refugee Policy

2003
・Regional Historical Identity and the Euroregion in Saxony
・Democratization in the Central and East European Countries and the Influence of the Conditionality of the European Union
・Contemporary Austrian Politic and the FPOe
・Cooperation among the International Organizations - the Cases in the Former Yugoslavia
・The Disintegration of the Former Yugoslavia from the Aspects of Pop Culture and People's Lives
・Britain and the European Monetary Union in the 1970s and the 1990s
・Race and Immigration Policy in the European Countries
・Postwar Political System of the Stalin's USSR
・Politics in the Baltic Countries