Sustainability at the Ronin Institute

By Research Scholar Oumaima Ben Amor What we innovate, invent, advance, or know today started off as research fueled by our curiosity. Research is an essential phase in the understanding of problems and challenges which involves the development of new ideas and solutions. It has long shed light on the global threats that we are …

Our Ronin Institute home at 10 years

By Research Scholar Emily Monosson, first published in the May 2022 issue of Kitsune Welcome! You’ve stumbled across the launch of the good ship Ronin Blog, the official blog of the Ronin Institute. Updates here will cover developments at the Ronin Institute, as well as topics of potential interest to independent scholars everywhere – or …

A Young Scientist’s Journey: There and Back Again

By Research Scholar Bryan Quoc Le I had the extraordinary fortune of having the opportunity to publish a book on the topic of food science while completing my Ph.D. program – 150 Food Science Questions Answered. The book was published in 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. The experience of writing the …

Reinventing the humanities: fostering a new culture of scholarship or looking back to the past?

By Research Scholar Miloš Todorović Why not start this with a personal story? It is, after all, a personal essay on why I joined the Ronin Institute, even if the title is a bit misleading. Like so many others, 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic took me by surprise, changing my day-to-day life entirely. Yes, this …

If physical education is taught to children, why not mental education? —A proposal to educate the mind

By Research Scholar Jose Luis Perez Velazquez We live in a paradoxical world. In a time when everybody cries for freedom, where liberties are championed, we live in conditions that constantly enslave us. From social media to technology, we do not seem to have time for ourselves anymore, our beliefs and opinions being manipulated as …

Preserving cultural heritage in times of crisis: the role of social media

By Research Scholar Kristin Parker I identify as a cultural heritage defender.  I’ve been fortunate to have spent decades working with several remarkable museums including The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. With a speciality in managing museum collections, I’ve worked with  every …

Multilingualism, global competency and language learning for a better world: The role of independent scholars

By Research Scholar Kathleen Stein-Smith Languages offer benefits and opportunities for those who can learn and use additional languages in their studies and professional lives, and in their roles as citizens both locally and globally. Language learning and language use also offer cognitive benefits at all ages. Unfortunately, US students do not always have the …

Making change happen

Scholarship Values Summit 2021Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Barriers to academic reform are often more cultural than technical, and highlight the need for a sustained movement for change. To conclude the Scholarship Values Summit 2021–an unconference that was co-hosted by the Ronin Institute and IGDORE–participants discussed the necessary cultural change to realize …

Reshaping environmental education towards ecosystem restoration in the new normal

By Ronin Research Scholar Christopher Punzalan On November 11-12, 2021, I was able to participate in the 13th Philippine Network of Educators on Environment (PNEE) Virtual International Conference and Scientific Meeting held via Zoom through the conference scholarship grant from the Ronin Institute. The theme of the conference was “Reshaping Environmental Education towards Ecosystem Restoration …

Our shared values as scholars

Scholarship Values Summit 2021Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Identifying our values as scholars is the first step toward making needed change in our academic culture (see Part One of this three-part blog series). In this second blog post of the series (cross-posted on IGDORE’s Medium), we provide a summary of scholarship values …