Professor Tony Chapman and Dr Margaret Masson, Vice Principal of St Chad’s College, met up with Dr Itsuki Kitani who is visiting Durham’s Teikyo University campus this month.   Dr Kitani, an alumni of St Chad’s College and now a lecturer in the Department of Education and Culture, is helping to build links with academics in the University’s Department of Economics which is based in central Tokyo.

Professor Chapman will be making a return visit to Tokyo and Yamagata in March to continue research on social enterprise which has been running for several years with colleagues from Tohuko and Sanno Universities. A second purpose of the trip is to explore patterns of investment in the UK from Japan and consequent return investment of British firms in Japan. This will include meetings with academics at Teikyo University and with senior officials at the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan and the UKTI team at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

A seminar for the Institute for Local Governance on inward investment of Japanese firms in North East England, which will be held at Teikyo University here in Durham in July, will be informed by the study visit together with a scoping study in North East England with local authorities, Japanese and UK businesses.