During a Meiji University trip to Ukraine and Belarus for research on Chernobyl, Yusuke first became interested in corruption studies. After speaking with researchers and locals there, he noticed systemic corruption in the area’s governance exacerbating negative impressions on people’s trust to the government. This led him to do his first MA in Corruption and Governance at the University of Sussex in the UK last year, utilizing of his experience in writing his dissertation on why anti-corruption reforms in Kenya so often fail.
He says that his prior academic exposure at Sciences Po in Lyon, France and the University of California at Berkeley in the US also helped him develop a more critical understanding of African political history, rentier states and corruption in an interdisciplinary perspective. Before joining CEU, his research on corruption enabled him to engage with locals in his own country, Japan, through partaking in community discussions on people’s perception of politicians’ corruption. Now, as part of the first batch of CEU students in Vienna, he aims to take advantage of the one-year MA in Political Science program to deepen his specialization on corruption studies and considers investigating the success or failure of anti-corruption strategies in Central and Eastern Europe.