Dr Aoi Sugimoto is a social scientist at the Japan Fisheries Research & Education Agency. Her research area includes coastal community/island studies, environmental sociology and community based natural resource management. She completed her PhD in 2018 at the University of Tokyo, with the dissertation describing how social cohesion and cooperative behaviour are shaped among Japanese small island (Okinawa) community residents including the migrant population. During her 2^nd and 3^rd year of PhD (in 2017 and 2018), Aoi visited CMS collaborating mainly with Ingrid van Putten, Chris Cvitanovic, Karen Alexander and Marcus Haward. During that time, Aoi strengthened her analysis and discussion component of her dissertation working with CMS collaborators. This experience at CMS helped Aoi enhance her research capacity which helped her PhD work to win The Deans Award (academic excellence) at the Department of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo. In addition, based on this visit, Aoi and her colleagues/collaborators in Japan and Australia organized a workshop in February 2018 which established a Global Transdisciplinary Ocean Research Partnership (G-TORP) among CMS, University of Tokyo and other countries/institutions in the Asia-Pacific.