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Background & Concepts

Overview

In today’s world of diversifying values, the realization of ideal wellbeing for users is a complex theme that is deeply related to “sensitivity.” The realization of wellbeing, which forms the basis of our lives, requires solving many issues, which necessitates an approach in which knowledge from a wide range of specialized fields is interrelated based on “Kansei.” The ambiguity of “sensitivity” has made it a difficult area of investigation for conventional academic disciplines. Therefore, the Department of User Kansei Studies was launched in April 2023 as a small, elite department to nurture master’s and doctoral students. Students will explore and practice wellbeing by taking a bird’s-eye view of “Kansei” as their center, crossing and integrating their expertise, and collaborating by making full use of various academic knowledge and methodologies.

Crossing Borders and the Fusion of Knowledge

In the Department of User Kansei Studies, the highly interdisciplinary research institutes of the Faculty of Design, Faculty of Human-Environment Studies, and Kyushu University Museum collaborated to form a dynamic core. Furthermore, by mobilizing the resources of Kyushu University, a comprehensive university, and with “Kansei” as the keyword, the program fosters new cross-border and fusion-type specialists by crossing and fusing diverse expertise from the three perspectives of “human understanding,” “co-existence (kyousei),” and “co-creation.”

Mobilization, Crossing Borders, and the Process of Fusing Expertise

In the User Kansei Studies major, students will acquire methodologies in the three processes of mobilizing, crossing borders, and integrating specialized knowledge and will aim to utilize comprehensive knowledge by flexibly making full use of these processes. In “mobilization of knowledge,” students collect knowledge from a wide range of specialized academic fields at Kyushu University to gain a bird’s-eye view. In the next step, “Crossing the Boundaries of Knowledge,” each area of expertise interacts and collaborates with each other to find solutions to problems. In the “Fusion of Knowledge,” each area of specialization works together to create new knowledge that will lead to essential problem solving.

Curriculum Concept

In the master’s program, required courses include “Fusion and Transborder Literacy,” which serves as a foundation for deepening specialized areas and crossing borders to other specialized areas, and “Introduction to User Sensitivity Studies,” which provides basic knowledge and theories of each academic field. Furthermore, students are required to take “Fusion and Transborder PTL (Project Team Learning)” and the “Transborder Seminar,” which are unique courses in this major and practical in that they approach problem solving while crossing and integrating different fields of study. Students with diverse professional backgrounds work as a team to deepen their respective expertise and repeatedly cross borders between different fields. Through this process, students gain an understanding of the complexity of social issues and problems that arise from the intertwining of various fields, acquire the ability to cooperate with others, and create new values to solve problems.

In addition to taking courses in each specialized field from the three perspectives of “Human Understanding,” “Symbiosis,” and “Co-creation,” students with diverse specialties such as design, art, sensibility science, psychology, pedagogy, anthropology, and sociology are encouraged to take courses offered by other schools in addition to their own so that they can deepen their specialties. The doctoral program is designed for students with diverse specialties such as psychology, education, anthropology, and sociology to deepen their expertise.

In the doctoral course, the above-mentioned master’s course subjects are further deepened, and guidance for writing doctoral dissertations is emphasized.