During her fieldwork stay in China in September 2024, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Monika ARNOŠTOVÁ of the Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures” visited Zhejiang University, where she consulted her research design with Prof. LIU Tao from the School of Public Affairs. Consequently, she stayed one month as a visiting scholar at the East China Normal University in Shanghai and greatly profited from the support of the School of Social Development, especially from its director Prof. WEN Jun. In Shanghai, she conducted semi-structured interviews with more than 30 young people under 35 years old working across a variety of industries. Her study aimed at exploring the attitudes of young people living in Shanghai towards work-life balance, alternative working models and coping strategies while facing the changing conditions in the Chinese labour market. While in Shanghai, she also frequently encountered and supported two doctoral students from the East Asian Futures programme, Ms. Anna-Maria RAU and Mr. Buyun GONG. During her visit to Beijing, she also discussed research proceedings with Igor SEVENARD, another PhD candidate from the East Asian Futures programme.

In the first half of November 2024, Monika ARNOŠTOVÁ spent two weeks in Taiwan conducting expert interviews with Taiwanese scholars regarding a similar research design fitted to the Taiwanese reality. For this purpose, she interviewed Professors CHANG Chin-fen from the Institute of Sociology and TSAI Ming-Chang from the Research Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Academia Sinica. Later, she also discussed her research design with Professor FAN Gang-Hua, the head of the Sociology Department from Soochow University in Taipei and with Professor YANG Jingli from the Sociology Department of National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung. While in Taipei, she also met with two other doctoral researchers from the East Asian Futures programme, Ms. Pao-wen HUANG and Mr. Minkyun PARK.

In the second half of November 2024, she spent two weeks as a visiting scholar at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) and greatly profited from discussions on her research topic with the members of the institute, as well as from participation in the institute’s events. During her time at DIJ, she also conducted expert interviews with Professor Jun IMAI from the Department of Sociology at Sophia University and Professor Hiroshi ISHIDA from the Institute of Social Science of the University of Tokyo. All these encounters were immensely helpful in improving the design of her comparative research project in Taiwan and Japan. While in Tokyo, she also met with two other doctoral researchers from the East Asian Futures programme, Mr. Kohei MATSUURA and Mr. Minkyun PARK.