The department has carried out general theoretical studies in the areas of descriptive linguistics, field linguistics, historical comparative linguistics, and other related fields along with individual studies on specific languages based on those theoretical foundations.

Lectures and seminars are given selectively on the above topics and include descriptive linguistics, field linguistics, comparative linguistics, phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics and studies on such languages as Sino-Tibetan, Semitic, native American languages including Eskimo, African, Indo-European, Korean and Japanese. Foreign language courses given by this department are focused mainly on Asian languages such as Korean, Burmese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Arabic, Persian, Indonesian, Tamil, and others. Fields outside the staff’s major concerns are covered by part-time lecturers from other universities.

Undergraduate and graduate students attend their respective courses, though some lectures and seminars are open to both. Each graduate student is required to submit at least one paper a year.

The staff, students and graduates organize the Kyoto University Linguistic Circle, which holds three meetings a year, where lectures and papers on various topics are presented. The journal Kyoto University Linguistic Research is annually published by the department.

• http://ling.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/modules/pico/index.php?content_id=34

The graduate program of the Sociology Department consists of four sub-departments: Sociology, Studies of Social Relations, Comparative Studies of Cultural Behavior, and Comparative Sociology.

In the Sociology sub-department, both sociological theories and historical sociology are taught. In Studies of Social Relations, cultural phenomenon and communication in contemporary society are studied with empirical research. In Comparative Studies of Cultural Behavior, socio-cultural anthropology and rural sociology are taught. Seminars are organized on social problems, popular culture, and social stratification in the Program of Comparative Sociology.

The Department has conducted empirical research on various aspects of the contemporary world. Among recent projects are ones on Japanese popular culture in a global context, comparative sociological studies of the Asian family. Rural sociological fieldwork of a Japanese mountain village in the Kumano region has been in progress since 1998. The department publishes Kyoto Shakaigaku Nenpo (Kyoto Journal of Sociology) with English abstracts.

In this department, students are required to be familiar both with sociological theories and empirical social research methods.

• http://www.socio.kyoto-u.ac.jp/english/

KANZAKI, Nobutsugu Ass. Prof.

The department has carried out research and educational projects in general experimental psychology since its foundation in 1906. Graduate and undergraduate programs are based on experimental psychology, covering fields of perception, cognition, memory, learning, neural mechanisms, and development in both human and nonhuman subjects. Undergraduate students are required to submit a thesis before graduation. Graduate students are expected to have sufficient background knowledge on experimental design to perform a series of experiments and are highly encouraged to develop their original research in-depth. Current research activities in the department include: visual psychophysics, working memory, eye-movement during reading, attentional processing in vision, visual consciousness, comparative study of perception and cognition, evolution of intelligence and affect, cognitive development, cognitive neuroscience of memory, mechanisms of neuronal coding.

The department publishes the peer-reviewed nation-wide quarterly journal Shinrigaku Hyoron (Japanese Psychological Review). Local professional meetings such as the Kyoto International Seminar for Psychology and the Kyoto Psychology Seminar are organized several times a year by the department.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/psy/index_e.html

The department was founded in 1907 as the first geography department in Japanese universities and has remained a center of human-geographical studies in Japan. It consists of three sub-fields (geography, human geoecology and landscape history) and they are interrelated through research and education. Lectures on historical, rural, urban, economic, population and quantitative geography are delivered by the staff of the department. Other teaching topics managed by invited lecturers include geomorphology, geographical information systems and man-environment systems. It supervises the maps and ethnological materials section of the University Museum, which includes a large collection of rare maps of early modern Japan, together with various daily-life utensils brought from Micronesia, Southwest Asia and East Africa. In this department, graduate students are required to publish their research results as refereed papers in leading geographical journals.

• http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/geography/geo-top_page/