The Education Fellows Program was established by the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue in 2007. The program honors the educational legacy of global peace builder and Center founder, Daisaku Ikeda, and aims to advance research and scholarship on the internationally growing field of Ikeda/Soka studies in education.
This field coheres around historical, conceptual, and empirical scholarship on the philosophies and practices of Japanese educators Daisaku Ikeda, Josei Toda, and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, and the sōka, or “value-creating,” approaches they have enacted and inspired worldwide. These philosophies and practices undergird the Soka kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, women’s college, and universities in seven countries across Asia and the Americas; inform non-Soka public and private schools and universities in various countries; and shape the practices and perspectives of thousands of educators and school leaders in diverse multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual contexts. The past decade in particular has witnessed remarkable developments in the field of Ikeda/Soka studies in education, including the establishment of numerous university-affiliated research initiatives and institutes, courses and degree programs, scholarly publications and translations, and regular presentations at international conferences.
Fellows will be eligible for two years of funding at $10,000 per year to support doctoral dissertations in the field of Ikeda/Soka studies in education, including its relation to the philosophy and practice of education more generally. We invite a wide range of approaches, including dissertation research that examines intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of Ikeda/Soka studies in education.
We are now accepting applications for the 2022-2024 cohort. All application materials must be submitted by 11:59pm ET on September 1, 2022. For more details, please visit our website ikedacenter.org or contact Anri Tanabe at: atanabe@ikedacenter.org