Julia Emory

FLAS Fellow

About

Julia Emory is a recipient of the Academic Year 2020-2021 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. The award provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students with financial support to develop fluency in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and expertise in the regions in which these languages are spoken. Click here to learn more.

I am a second-year master’s student in Japan Studies focusing primarily on international relations and national security in Asia. I am particularly interested in emerging domains such as cyber and space as the nature of Asia’s threat landscape shifts in tune with developing technologies. I am also interested in the role of civil society in determine access to information salient to national security vis-a-vis the media.

Japan is especially crucial in gaining a cohesive understanding of security in Asia because of limitations imposed by Article 9 (which forbids war as a sovereign right) of the postwar Constitution. Japan, however, has risen to become the third largest economy in the world and continues to pioneer new technologies in the domains of cyber and space. As an integral part of the United States’ bulwark of security in East Asia, private and public sector roles regarding Asian security demand in-depth knowledge of Japan– culturally (linguistically) and politically. As such, I intend on entering the job market with nothing short of advanced fluency in Japanese.

I am extraordinarily grateful for the investment by the Global Studies Center to allow me to continue advanced Japanese language coursework in conjunction to my master’s studies in Japanese history and politics. Simultaneous to my coursework at UW, I am participating in the Critical Language Scholarship Virtual Institute for Advanced Japanese this fall. Both opportunities will situate me with the necessary language ability to pivot into cybersecurity and later political science following my completion of the JSIS Masters in Japan Studies.