My year at Yale University for the Yale Fox International Fellowship

I recently completed a year at Yale University as a PhD researcher as a part of the Yale Fox International Fellowship; a long-running program aimed at supporting research that promotes ‘peace and prosperity in the world’. It was one of the best experiences of my life - challenging, stimulating, inspiring, and feeling connected with likeminded people.

For the past two years I’ve been working towards a PhD thesis titled ‘towards a theory of culture and empathy’. While at Yale I focused mostly on the ‘culture’ aspect in terms of social theory, psychology, and Japanese history in preparation for an ethnographic study in rural Japan.

Yale is an environment and culture where students and academics can be fully immersed. Perhaps it is being based in a smaller city/town (New Haven), I'm not sure. It really inspired me and I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent time with so many wonderful people, and to have the space to think. This last point is sometimes underrated. Despite having spent 10+ years focused on the topic of ‘empathy’, while at Yale I was inspired to radically deepen my focus and expand my ambitions into a program of research.

While at Yale I participated in several classes and discussion groups including; Centre for Cultural Sociology, seminar on Cultural Psychology, Making of Modern Ukraine, a Japanese History seminary called ‘Yale and Japan’, and Equitable Teaching training.

Soon I’ll be starting the next phase of my research project, including an exciting ethnographic study in Japan. This will be a first in using grounded theory empirical data to explore cultural diversity in terms of how people understand each other (with or without empathy). In the future, I aim to replicate this study in various cultural settings around the world.

To any PhD students who are interested in applying for the Fox International Fellowship - I highly recommend it! See details here.

The images below: my favourite spot for thinking at the Yale Sterling Library; Fox Fellows at our Thanksgiving lunch; with Laura enjoying the peaceful inner courtyard at the Yale Sterling Library; and the obligatory picture with Yale’s official mascot, Handsome Dan.