JJ Gilleland is currently enrolled in the Master of International Affairs program and serves as a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Political Science & International Affairs.  Gilleland recently received funding from Graduate Studies to attend the International Academic Forum’s Conference on Asian Arts & Humanities in Tokyo in May 2020 and a joint conference with ISA/ECPR/APSA on Human Rights and Foreign Policy at the University of London in June 2020.

 

These travels are made possible with funding from graduate studies. According to JJ, “I wrote to graduate studies and give them an estimated cost along with an explanation the benefits to me and the University for attending the conferences. I previously lived in Tokyo for 8 years and started the MAIA program from there and was able to focus a lot of my research on Japan and East Asia. The research I will presenting in Tokyo is a comparative study of Taiwan and Japan and how family registry systems have affected gay rights and same-sex marriage movements. In London, I will be presenting something similar but it will relate to the human rights aspect of same-sex marriage.”

 

Congratulations to JJ!  We look forward to hearing all about your experiences later this summer.

Jonathan Gilleland. Graduate Assistant, Department of Political Science