User Researcher System 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
User Researcher System
Shin-ichiro KUMAGAYA, Associate Professor, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology
The importance of “co-production of research” to conduct research activities together with stakeholders is being recognized in areas of science and technology that can have a significant impact on the lives of citizens, including minorities, such as sustainability science, medicine, education and criminal justice, as featured in Nature in 2018. In 2018, the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, in collaboration with the Personnel Department, realized a “user researcher system” in which practitioners with disabilities are employed for a certain period of time from the communities concerned for the purpose of promoting co-production, and currently six user researchers in two laboratories of the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology are actively researching. (In FY2022, the Center for Diversity in Medical Education and Research, the Graduate School of Medicine, with which we are working closely, will also start hiring four user researchers, and the trial of co-production is gradually spreading beyond the departments.)
