At the Tsukuba Conference 2025, I was involved in two presentations in the “Imagine and create your inclusive smart society” session: a presentation on the manga story for which I received the first prize and which was on the topic of elderly population and their inclusion in rural areas; and the second presentation was alongside group members from the University of Tsukuba and was about our final business proposal project for the Inclusive Smart Society PBL course we attended during the 2024-2025 academic year.
Owing to the wonderful organization and extreme kindness of the session hosts, my experience was overwhelmingly positive!
Although I was extremely nervous to present my manga story since I am majoring in Sociology and I have no experience as a writer, I felt that the companionship of two other group members gave me a lot of courage and support during the second presentation, although we were communicating across continents as we were building our ideas.
I am also amazed and thrilled that in both instances I and my group received feedback from professionals: I had the chance to discuss my manga story with a manga artist and a professional editor, while for our project we received feedback from Tsukuba city officials, company owners and entrepreneurs, and University of Tsukuba professors.
These kinds of conversations are extremely productive and motivating, and, with the addition of cross-cultural collaboration, they provide a completely different perspective to what I am studying.
I am extremely grateful for the chance to participate in such an interdisciplinary conference and for the chance to communicate cross-culturally and across continents, and I hope to apply all I have learned in my future research as well – especially the idea that any research needs to be written with an audience in mind!
