Alumna participates in the 65th International Student Conference

Laxmi Kumar, LLM International Law alumna, recently took part in the International Student Conference in Japan.

The International Student Conference (ISC) is a two-week academic programme, yearly hosted in Japan with long-standing history dating back to the Second World War. The purpose of this conference is to enable qualified and talented academics from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds to collaboratively produce research outcomes, relevant to contemporary global challenges.

This year’s topics ranged from deteriorating environment and economic growth, feminist perspectives on wars and conflicts, to the current refugee crisis. Research outcomes were captured in individual policy proposals which have been issued to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan on September 5th, 2019.

The ISC, which is sponsored and supported by renowned private and public sector institutions such as the UNDP Representative Office in Japan, has offered Laxmi a great opportunity to build global student networks and to learn about different perspectives to common challenges.

Laxmi comments “my participation at the ISC has provided me with a unique platform to effectively utilise my skills and knowledge acquired through the LL.M. International Law programme at the University of Leeds. Especially contents from the module ‘Global Governance through Law’ which is directed by Dr. Amrita Mukherjee at the School of Law, have helped me to identify contemporary governance challenges and formulate relevant policy recommendations with special emphasis on multi-stakeholder governance and private sector engagement. These aspects have been included in our final policy proposal which entails recommendations to increase utilisation of public-private partnerships to attain policy objectives, supportive of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

As a German participant, and representative of our academic institution, it has been my pleasure to be a delegate for the 65th ISC and I have been honoured to hold the opening speech for this year’s conference in alignment with the theme ‘Embrace Diversity as Youths of Today and Driving Forces of Tomorrow’.