Student Life

Gaye Rowley
 (Matriculated 1988)


When I studied here, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies were still called Oriental Studies. My three years at Newnham, 1988-1991, were the beginning of more than a decade spent studying and working in Britain. Newnham provided a friendly, supportive and international environment in which to research and write a PhD dissertation, and I count the women I met and lived with during those years among my closest friends.

 

In January 1992 I began my first full-time job, teaching Japanese language, literature and society at the University of Wales, Cardiff (now Cardiff University). Japanese Studies is a small field in the UK, vulnerable to funding cutbacks and the whims of Eurocentric vice-chancellors; my job was the only academic position on offer in Japanese that year. I spent seven and a half years in Cardiff, doing what all beginning academics must do: I learned how to teach, was awarded my PhD, granted tenure, promoted from Lecturer A to B, and signed a contract for my first book. Then in 1999, when resignations and illness looked like leaving me to run the department singlehandedly, I decided to quit and try my luck elsewhere.

 

In April 2000, a research fellowship from the Canon Foundation took me to Kyoto University, and a year later I moved to Tokyo to take up a visiting professorship in the Law School at Waseda University, one of Japan's top private universities. My job teaching English and Japanese literature is now permanent. I can't imagine a more enjoyable life than one spent in teaching and research, and I shall always be grateful to Newnham College, where I was encouraged to follow the dictates of my interests, rather than the advice of bank managers, employment counsellors, and the market.

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