Waseda University has maintained a longstanding tradition of inviting specialists to research interdisciplinary issues in small, highly motivated study groups. Project Research Institutes bring this tradition to a higher level, breathing new life into cross-disciplinary research by integrating projects into tightly-knit research units.
The enhanced variety and flexibility engendered by this approach has encouraged research with external organizations, both domestic and foreign, and opened avenues to generous funding from companies and the government. Fixed-length, goal-oriented programs of several years, moreover, enable a “scrap and build” approach, a key to maintaining creativity in scholarship at the forefront of knowledge.