Welcome Address and Recognition of IAFOR Scholarship Winners

Welcome to IAFOR’s Spring Conference Series in Japan, held in the great city of Tokyo, and to the Asian Conferences on Education and International Development (ACEID2026), Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences (ACP2026), and Aging and Gerontology (AGen2026). ACP is now in its sixteenth year, while ACEID and AGen are now in their twelfth.

You join us at one of the most significant and poignant times of the year in Japan. In late March, students graduate and say goodbye to their classmates, and quickly turn around in April to begin anew in different classrooms, schools, and colleges, while those with freshly minted degrees join the workforce and begin their professional lives. During this period, the delicate cherry blossoms bloom, signifying the end of one year’s cycle, and the beginning of the next. People of all generations gather under the sakura to admire their beauty, swim in nostalgia, anticipate new beginnings, and be reminded of the ephemerality of human existence, and similarly galvanised to make the most of life!

This year, we expect a record number of participants in this hybrid event. Some 900 people representing 580 institutions and organisations from 68 different countries will join us in a celebration of IAFOR’s mission of encouraging interdisciplinary discussion, facilitating intercultural awareness, and promoting international exchange. People from around the world will join us to share their ideas, make new personal and professional contacts, and seek new research opportunities and partnerships. An IAFOR conference is a unique comparative, contrastive, and collaborative laboratory that emphasises academic excellence, but also conviviality. In these uncertain times, we are sustained by our friendships and partnerships; they help us make sense of the world.

I encourage your active participation and engagement across the disciplines; we have so much to learn from each other.

I look forward to meeting you all.

Speaker Biography

Joseph Haldane

Joseph Haldane is the founder, chairman, and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s global business and academic operations.

Dr Haldane has a PhD from the University of London in nineteenth-century French studies (ULIP/RHUL), and has research interests in world history and politics; international education; and governance and decision making. Since 2015, he has been a Guest Professor at The University of Osaka’s School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre since 2017.

In 2020, Dr Haldane was elected Honorary Professor of University College London (UCL) through the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, and full Professor in the United Nations Peace University's European Center for Peace and Development in 2022. A member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for global governance, he holds visiting professorships at Belgrade and Doshisha Universities where he teaches ethics and governance. He is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Professor Haldane has had full-time faculty positions at the Université Paris-Est Créteil, Sciences Po Paris, and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute (Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas), and the Schools of Journalism of Sciences Po Paris and Moscow State University.

Dr Haldane has been invited to speak at universities and conferences globally, including the UN HQ in New York, and advised universities, NGOs and governments on issues relating to international education policy, public-private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder forums. He was the project lead on the 2019 Kansai Resilience Forum, held by the Japanese Government through the Prime Minister’s Office and oversaw the 2021 Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned study on Infectious Diseases on Cruise Ships.

About the Presenter(s)
Joseph Haldane is the founder, chairman, and CEO of IAFOR.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

Presentation Schedule