Around 150 years ago, two groups of Japanese students came to University College London (UCL) from Choshu and Satsuma. They are known as Choshu-Five and Satsuma-19, which includes Hirobumi Ito (First Prime Minister of Japan), Kaoru Inoue (First Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan), Akinori Mori (First Minister of Education of Japan), Tomoatsu Godai (Founder of Osaka Chamber of Commerce). After returning to Japan they made a significant contribution to establishing current modern Japan.
UCL celebrates this history in association with many Japanese partners including universities, high schools and industries. As part of the celebrations, UCL created a special summer school, “UCL-Japan Youth Challenge” in 2015. UCL warmly invites Japanese and UK high school students and teachers to this summer school. In this school, the students and teachers participate into various educational activities/events. These include lectures by professors of UCL and Cambridge, symposiums and language lessons. In particular, we organise “UCL-Japan Grand Challenge Workshop” ‘In the footsteps of the pioneers: new pioneers in dialogue’ which offers great opportunities for Japanese and UK high school students to discuss together six types of global problems (UCL Grand Challenge) with guidance of UCL professors. We firmly believe that the participants will have excellent international experience in the top world universities of UCL and University of Cambridge.
This event is supported by UK Japan Institute, Rikkyo School in England, University of Cambridge, The UCL Academy, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Japan Foundation, JSPS, IHI, Embassy of Japan and many other organizations and individuals.
Public Events
During UCL-Japan Youth Challenge, we are organising three public events. Public participants can register through Eventbrite with tickets available from the link below (scroll to the bottom of the page to the ‘Public Events’ section):
