Workshop on Socio-Technological Imaginaries × Science × Ethics UTokyo D&I Actions and Messages
― UTokyo D&I Campaign 2022 ―
The University of Tokyo has launched a campaign aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion on campus, and making the university a place where people from diverse backgrounds can thrive. The initiative, called UTokyo D&I Campaign 2022, started in March 2022. Here, we introduce plans and actions related to D&I initiatives from members of the UTokyo community, including deans and directors of various UTokyo organizations.
Actions and Messages
Workshop on Socio-Technological Imaginaries × Science × Ethics
Atsushi DEGUCHI, Dean, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences
The “Research Ethics Workshop” is an opportunity for the research community to share what D&I is, to imagine what the future of our research might be and how such a future can bring about D&I, and explore how science and technology can be tools for accomplishing D&I.
Researchers tend to think of research ethics as a tedious and cumbersome process, and they want to quickly and formally complete the procedures related to it. However, this series of workshops is an attempt to transform such tedious and cumbersome research ethics into a stimulative open dialogue for considering fundamental questions about what does it mean to be human, what is a better way to live and what the Earth is to be like. This exploratory workshop will help researchers brush up on their socio-technological imaginative abilities and foster knowledge and awareness about human rights, social justice and environmental ethics.
One of the workshops featured a dialogue among our professors from different fields but with similar ethical issues. Graphic recording visualized the discussions. The workshop discussions shed light on a variety of keywords: transparency, trust, dignity and respect, fairness and freedom, and more.
The faculty and staff of the Graduate School confirmed that “this process of thinking through active dialogue is truly the practice of research ethics.”
Through these discussions, which make the most of our graduate school’s distinctiveness, and encompass researchers from diverse fields, students have the opportunity to be intellectually stimulated and think about D&I in research.
