This the first post in our new series, “Writing Reflections from EDST 602A.” This series features peer interviews from a doctoral course taught by Professor Jude Walker.
In Fall 2024, classmates interviewed one another about their experiences, goals, and thoughts on writing. Their reflections explore EDST students’ journeys toward writing, their identities as writers, their influences, and feelings about the writing process.
In this post, Ria Misra interviews Kentaro Hasa. They discuss writing in multiple languages, cultural identities, and the complexities of navigating Western academic spaces. Kentaro’s journey sheds light on the personal and professional impacts of multilingualism and the importance of fostering connections in graduate school.
Ria Misra interviews Kentaro Hasa
After our first class for this course, Kentaro and I realized we were both being supervised by Taylor Webb, and had very similar research interests. His interest in data-driven education policy discourses was fascinating given my similar research area.
Kentaro’s Academic Journey
While interviewing Kentaro, I learned about his inspiring journey at UBC. He shared about the challenges he faced as a Japanese-speaker in a predominantly English-speaking learning environment.
Navigating a pedagogical space in a language so different from his own, Kentaro’s master’s dissertation is his proudest achievement. I was very moved by his dedication to learning a new language, as well as learning in that language, all the way through his master’s to a doctoral programme.
Cultural Identity and Writing
Kentaro provided interesting insights on writing in English language as well as in Japanese. He said it was much easier for him to write academically in English, as opposed to Japanese, given his experience of higher education at UBC. His preference to write specifically in English resonated strongly with my cultural background.
There are so many sides to our personalities that are so tied to our native languages, but given our training and education in Westernised institutions, we both prefer to write in English.
We talked about the power imbalances that exist within academic writing in our respective countries (India and Japan). In both areas, academic writing in English is seen to be more “respectable.”
Doctoral degrees from the West are seen to hold more value, feeding into the “internationalisation” of domestic institutions in our respective countries. This discussion was extremely comforting for me, given how we as Asians are constantly navigating Canadian institutions through the lens of multilingualism.
Our languages are deeply tied to our selfhood— our values, humor, politics, and culture are shaped by the linguistic nuances of our native languages. However, these parts of our selves are almost always hidden or shelved in Western classrooms.
Writing and Connection
Kentaro recently secured the research fellowship at the Institute of Asian Research (IAR) from the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He applied for the fellowship for the opportunity to collaborate with diverse researchers working within the Asian context.
I asked Kentaro the best advice he’s received about academic writing in English…
He shared about a professor who encouraged him to focus on translating his thoughts into shorter sentences. He described how he had big conceptual ideas that would often lose their meaning while formulating paragraphs. He holds onto this advice, saying it really simplified the writing process.
Kentaro’s journey as a graduate student has really inspired me. The space he occupies as an Asian researcher in a highly neoliberalised institution in the West is a story that many of us resonate with—the impact of English as a language of communication beyond professional usage, and how it shapes subjectivities within the university.
Kentaro and I also discussed the lack of collaborative spaces in Western academia. These interactions compel us to construct a particular type of “self,” one that oscillates between Western individualism and Asian collectivism, desiring a bit of both, none of either, or some of one at different points in time.
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