Paul Lai

Biography

Dr Paul Lai is the director and founder of the Department of Academic Writing Education (Mei-Writing) at Nagoya University, Japan. After receiving a DPhil in Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences from the University of Sussex, he has been devoting himself to research on how to make logic education practical and indispensable to higher education.

Dr Lai came to Japan in 2006, first working as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo Institute of Technology for a project on logic application. In 2008, he moved to Hokkaido University, where he started a project to apply logical thinking education to academic writing. Through the project, he helped the university establish the pilot scheme for its first academic writing centre.

In 2010, Dr Lai moved to Nagoya University, where he is developing the project of applying logical thinking education to research writing. In 2011, the Department of Academic Writing Education (nicknamed “Mei-Writing”) was established based on the logical thinking approach. Since then the department has employed 11 full-time associate professors and more than 20 teaching assistants.

During his time at Hokkaido University, Dr Lai was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation for his distinguished services at the writing centre. Since moving to Nagoya University, he has won an education grant for the Mei-Writing project five consecutive times. In April 2017 he won a four-year Kakenhi grant from JSPS for the development of logic education in research writing.

Featured Presentation (2017) | Change in Academic Writing Education