On January 21st and 22nd, Waseda University played host to the JCAS (Japan Consortium for Area Studies) Next Generation Workshop entitled ‘Overlapping Borders, Shaking Borders: The Israeli-Palestine Conflict in a Comparative Perspective’, with the Global COE Program providing support. The workshop was organized to provide a forum for young researcher’s primarily studying the Israeli-Palestine region to engage in a free discussion around the issue of borders. In order to facilitate comparisons with other areas, specialists of other regions such as Western Europe or the Balkans were positioned as presenters or commentators on the panels. It should be noted that the participants, both researchers and those with more hands-on experience, were not just discussing history but political geography as well.

While feeling that perhaps the concept of a border and the general border studies framework was left undefined in many of the presentations, I firmly believe that with over 50 people in attendance on both days witnessing some lively debates, it was the perfect occasion to introduce a new audience to the appeal and significance of border studies. We eagerly await the publication of the fruits of this workshop in either of our journals, ‘境界研究、Kyoukai Kenkyu’ (Japan Border Research) or the Eurasian Border Review.

Akihiro IWASHITA