Fellowships

CGP's Fellowship programs are a vital element of Its ongoing effort to build working partnerships between the US and Japan, and to foster productive collaboration among nations of the world. By identifying and supporting emerging talent, and through integrating exceptional individuals into collaborative efforts, these programs hope to develop the human resources for a new generation of international exchange.

The Abe Fellowship program provides policy scholars and professionals with the opportunity to carry out medium- to long-term study on public policy issues of pressing concern; Special Programs for Scientists build relationships between the scientific and engineering communities of the US and Japan, toward a solid Infrastructure for future collaboration and exchange.

Together these programs embrace a wide range of researchers from the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences, as well as from various professional fields. They encourage creative thinking, and reward those who pursue underexplored or newly developing subjects. Moreover, through meetings such as the Abe Fellows' Conference and the Summer Institute in Japan for science and engineering graduate students, they promote new interpersonal and interdisciplinary relationships, and encourage the joint development of new approaches to common intellectual and scientific challenges.

Abe Fellowship

The guiding principle behind the Abe Fellowship program is the development of individual talent for the future of global policy dialogue. By supporting focused and groundbreaking inquiry by US and Japanese researchers, the Abe Fellowships hope to enable scholars to address issues of mutual concern, and to lay the foundation for increased interaction between the policy research communities in both countries.

Toward this purpose, the Abe Fellowship each year enables 15 to 20 scholars from the social sciences and humanities to carry out research in three broad issue areas: global policy issues of pressing concern, problems common to advanced industrial societies; and issues relating to the improvement of US-Japan relations.

The Abe Fellowships are collaboratively administered on behalf of CGP by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, who hold a competitive screening in October of each year. Applicants, who must be postdoctoral scholars or professionals of commensurate experience, are selected through an extensive peer-review process.

By the end of JFY1994, the program had awarded 65 Abe Fellowships to US and Japanese citizens in universities, think tanks, and in the fields of journalism and law. The 1994-95 Fellowship selection committee meeting selected 16 new Fellows, who, during their respective tenures abroad in the US and Japan, will focus on such issues as international trade policy, labor migration, nuclear proliferation, energy policy, and comparative analyses of health care systems in the US and Japan.

In July 1994, Fellows from the 1992-93 and 1993-94 Fellowship periods gathered in Montavk, New York, for the Second Abe Fellows' Conference. A key opportunity for the Fellows to report on their research and interact with one another, the conference was also attended by program staff and outside policy specialists. During the five-day conference, Fellows presented their research in small colloquia, exchanging perspectives with other scholars from different fields. They also participated in joint problem-solving workshops with senior practitioners from governmental and nongovernmental policy-making organizations, aimed at developing new methodologies for interdisciplinary policy research; the conference concluded with panel discussions that intended to set the agenda for future collaborative research. JFY1994 also brought a mid-course evaluation of the program, conducted by two independent academic consultants, one American and one Japanese. Focusing on the administration and management of the program, the evaluation considered the effectiveness of program policies and guidelines as practiced during the first four years of the program.

In JFY 1994, expenditures for the Abe Fellowship program totaled $2,249,518.