Chloé BELLEC　Senior Assistant Professor

Fields	Gender history, French Language Education
Researcher’s Data

I am from Bretagne, France, which is a lovely place quite popular with tourists for its old stone houses and its marvelously peaceful beaches and landscapes.
In France I started to practice a martial art called naginata. Naginata refers to a Japanese polearm similar to a halberd or a glaive. For practices, a wooden replica with a bamboo blade is used. Nowadays, naginata is also a martial art predominantly practiced by women in Japan. Gradually I became interested in learning more about its history, but unable to find any resources in France, I decided to do research by myself. To be able to do proper research I studied History and Japanese Language and Culture at Limoges and Paris Diderot University. Those degrees led me to write my PHD thesis at Kyoto University entitled Historical-sociological studies on naginata evolution: From a warrior weapon to a woman’s martial art and its international development, where I examined naginata history from a gender perspective.
While completing my doctorate at Kyoto University, I also obtained DUFLE certification, which is a university diploma in teaching French as a foreign language, through a co-sponsored course organized by the University Le Mans and The French Institute in Tokyo. During that time, I acquired French teaching skills and learned the history and evolution of teaching French as a foreign language. After graduation, I worked for three years, 2018 to 2021, at Ritsumeikan University as a French contracted lecturer. I am currently continuing my research about naginata history as well as studying various methodologies in teaching French such as active learning and vocabulary learning and acquisition.