The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Ryukyus is locat­ed in Oki­nawa, the south­ern­most pre­fec­ture of Japan, and con­sists of sev­en fac­ul­ties and eight grad­u­ate schools. Oki­nawa, an island pre­fec­ture locat­ed in the sub-trop­ics, has a unique ecosys­tem and dis­tinct tra­di­tion­al cul­ture. It has a long his­to­ry of estab­lish­ing rela­tion­ships with oth­er coun­tries, and its thriv­ing over­seas trade in the peri­od between the 14th and 16th cen­turies is one such exam­ple. Such exchanges have cre­at­ed a diverse and mul­ti­cul­tur­al soci­ety in Oki­nawa. In order to sus­tain and fur­ther devel­op such unique fea­tures of Oki­nawa, the uni­ver­si­ty pro­motes research in the fields of island and marine envi­ron­ment stud­ies, health and longevi­ty stud­ies, and Ryukyuan/Okinawan cul­tur­al stud­ies, all of which take advan­tage of Okinawa’s region­al char­ac­ter­is­tics. The uni­ver­si­ty also aims to nur­ture well-round­ed indi­vid­u­als imbued with knowl­edge and capa­bil­i­ties for social con­tri­bu­tion on a glob­al and region­al scale. As a uni­ver­si­ty with local and glob­al fea­tures, our uni­ver­si­ty has active­ly pro­mot­ed inter­na­tion­al exchanges with aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions over­seas, espe­cial­ly in the Asian and Pacif­ic regions. To date, the uni­ver­si­ty has con­clud­ed aca­d­e­m­ic exchange agree­ments with 114 insti­tu­tions in 40 coun­tries and areas world­wide, result­ing in a cos­mopoli­tan and dynam­ic cam­pus envi­ron­ment with many inter­na­tion­al stu­dents from all over the world.