NEWS

ICU Students Volunteers for Visegrad Group (V4) Panel Discussion Event at the Hungarian Embassy in Tokyo

Update: June 29, 2022

On May 27 2022, 10 ICU students (2 graduates, and 8 undergraduates) participated in a panel discussion event at the Hungarian Embassy in Tokyo, hosted by the embassy and Japan Expert Insights. The topic of the discussion was "Convergences in the Visegrad Group (V4) and Japan in the context of Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Vision (FOIP)". The V4 is run by Czech, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to strengthen stability in the Central Europe region (refer to Visagrad 4 website), and Hungary holds the presidency for 2021/2022.

The group of undergraduate and graduate students, who acted as volunteers for the event, were former students of Prof Stephen Nagy, Senior Associate Professor of ICU, who served as moderator for this event. Their majors included Peace Studies and International Relations.

ICU students contributed to the event by organizing the room, technology help, networking and communicating with guests and ensuring that the event went smoothly.

The students were also full members of the event being able to ask questions to the speakers and network with diplomats, scholars, MOFA officials, think tank analysts as well as newspaper chiefs from many prominent newspapers . They asked questions such as foreign policies in the South China Sea and towards Europe, China and her neighbors, Green New Deal, the various attending countries' interests in Japan and the Indo-Pacific region, as well as their career opportunities.

From the session students learned the importance of international society with rules based order. One also found Japan's role in facilitating networked approaches to ensuring regional and planetary security are deeply interesting.

Students also found dialogues with guests "both surprising and illuminating". Communicating with experts in politics and international relations helped them sharpen their social and communication skills and increased their confidence.

The guests were very surprised by the pro-activity of the students and their engagement with so many professionals. The Hungarian Embassy welcomes their participation in future events.