Profiles and Abstracts

Wei-chung Cheng obtained a PhD in history from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2012. He has successively served as an assistant researcher at the Marine History Research Center of the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, an associate researcher at the Institute of Taiwan History, an adjunct professor at the Department of History at National Taiwan University, and a director of the Tsao Yung-ho Foundation. He is the author of War, Trade, and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622-1683  (winner of the Korean Publishers Association Award), Island History Beyond Expansion: People and Taiwan in the East Asian Seas of the Seventeenth Century.

During the early 17th century, the medical facilities within the VOC (Dutch East India Company) were relatively basic. Nevertheless, the extensive network of VOC shipping enabled the worldwide exchange of medicinal resources, providing a distinctive chance to augment the existing inventory of medical supplies in physicians’ chests. This article provides a broad examination of VOC archival sources to illuminate the individuals engaged in healthcare at Zeelandia Fort and City, with a particular emphasis on the use of the Physician’s chest. The VOC personnel not only made use of medicinal substances but also evaluated their efficacy, sourcing them from both local materials and the contents of the physician’s chest. The VOC archives provide evidence of extensive exchanges of medicinal materials along maritime routes, granting historians valuable insights into the utilization of Chinese and Indian medicinal practices. A comprehensive investigation into the merging of Euro-Asian medicinal traditions uncovers Zeelandia’s importance as a regional center for the amalgamation of medical customs and as an experimental ground for multicultural medical expertise.

Keywords: Early Modern Pharmacy, VOC, Taiwan, Medicinal matter, Zeelandia 

Peter Kang is Chair of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Taiwan Normal University. Previously, he acted as Director of the Department of Taiwanese Culture, Department of Local Culture/Department of Taiwanese Language and Literature, National Dong Hwa University, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, National University of Education, Hualien, Provost of National Hualien Normal University.

After the retreat of the VOC from Formosa in the mid-17th century, European map-makers relied on either the obsolete Dutch sources or their contemporary French Jesuit geographical knowledge sent back from the Manchu Empire for their cartographical works of the island. As a result, the VOC toponymic legacies continued to survive on some cartographic works in the second half of the 19th century. In today’s Taiwan, the toponymic legacies of the VOC are still appropriated as a reminiscence of the local history of Taiwan in some cases of linguistic landscapes.  

Keywords: VOC, Place names, Toponymic Legacies, Cartographic works, 

Sinite Yu is Associate Fellow and Chair of the Education R&D Group of the Taiwan International Institute for Water Education, Special Researcher of the Ecological Engineering Research Center of National Taiwan University, Special Researcher of the Comprehensive Disaster Research Center of National Taiwan University, UNESCO-IHE Partnership for Water Education and Research (PoWER) Technical Committee Member, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Institute of Civil and Water Resources Engineering and Institute of Agricultural Sciences, National Chiayi University, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental and Disaster Prevention Design, Hua Fan University, Mountain Engineering Consultants Co., Ltd. Chief Planner. 　

Tidal land reclamation in Taiwan began in the early 1930’s with the Japanese technicians learning from European countries, especially Germany and the Netherlands. In the 1960’s, a large-scale project for tidal land reclamation sponsored by the UN-aids in the western coast of Taiwan was conducted. During the period of experiment and design, an international team with several German and five Dutch experts came to Taiwan to teach local technicians how to reclaim tidal land into agricultural land. One of the most famous sites in that project was called Aogu polder. After nearly 30 years of construction and modification, Aogu polder has evolved as the combination of agricultural and wildlife habitats. Following another 20 years of social dispute and debate, a compromised solution has finally been reached to make the polder with the co-existence of ecological function as well as agricultural production. Almost at the same period of time, de Oostvaardersplassen in the South Flevoland Polder (Zuidelijk Flevoland) was reclaimed. Since then, both tidal reclaimed lands in Aogu and Oostvaardersplassen were facing great social and ecological conflicts. But both polders have also found a new way for sustainability and made proud of paradigm shift. In 2014, people just discovered the similarity of the landscape and fate between Aogu in Taiwan and Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands. This beautiful coincidence may be rooted by the Dutch experts in the 1960’s since the very beginning of polder construction.

Keywords: tidal land reclamation, Aogu, Oostvaardersplassen

Viola van Onselen obtained MSc degree in Earth Sciences, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. PhD in Environmental Geography at the NTNU in Taiwan, focusing on data collection for sustainable management strategies in coastal areas through ecosystem-based approaches. Postdoc position at the Geography department of NTNU, exploring how sustainable approaches, like Nature-based Solutions, can increase the resilience of coastal zones in Taiwan. Research expertise: Nature-based Solutions, Coastal Management, Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation, Environmental Geology.

Taiwan and the Netherlands share a deep connection to the sea, as both countries rely on the sea for natural resources and have a long history of protecting their densely populated coastlines against the forces of the sea. Today they are both facing similar challenges, but their different coastal philosophies resulted in diverse management strategies and varying attitudes towards the coastal environment. Yet, while Dutch people often choose to actively explore coastal environments for recreational purposes, Taiwanese individuals tend to be more reserved when it comes to engaging in coastal and marine activities.

In this paper, I will outline strategies to work towards a more sustainable future for marine environments, where future generations can continue to explore and learn from the ocean, deepen their connection to the coastal landscape, and benefit from its resources. A new local Geopark, the Caota Sand Dunes (觀音草漯沙丘), which conserves the most extensive dune system in Taiwan, is well suited to implement natural approaches since coastal dunes act as a barrier to coastal hazards. The geopark actively promotes the local environment and function of coastal dunes, recognizing their ecological value and their protective role in the face of climate change. A current study is investigating the value of these dunes for Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction. As a key part of the study, coastal management strategies in the Dutch dune landscape are evaluated to explore implications for best fit practices in Taiwan’s coastal management. Additionally, a dune vulnerability assessment and assessment of local community involvement in geopark management and risk reduction strategies, are core objectives for this research. This study aims to identify factors that need to be addressed for an optimal functioning of the ecosystem, while the area is being managed and conserved as a geopark, through field research, focus groups and comparison studies on best practices. This paper discusses some of the challenges Taiwan and the Netherlands are facing and highlights the changing perspectives in coastal management, to support more sustainable practices.

Keywords: coastal environment, climate change, dune landscape, geopark 

Dr Mila Davids received her Ph.D at the Center for Business History (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and is assistant professor in the Technology Innovation and Society group at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She has published on innovation history, the knowledge infrastructure, and the dissemination of knowledge in various journals, including Business History, Journal of Modern European History, History of Technology, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management (TASM). Davids was the editor of the volume Industrial Production in the 7-volume History of Technology in the Netherlands in the 20^th Century and author of The Co-evolution of the National Knowledge Infrastructure and Innovations in Dutch Business in the 20th century in the series Business in the Netherlands in the 20^th Century. Her current research interest concerns cooperation and international knowledge transfer between Dutch and Taiwanese organizations and its importance for technological, societal, and sustainable transitions. She initiated a collaborative research project, ‘The Taiwanese-Dutch connections in historical perspective: cooperation, interactive learning, and circulation of knowledge’.

Although small and often invisible, chips are essential in our current society. Semiconductors are critical components for your computer and smartphone, even your toaster, car, electric bicycle, and heating system. It is not for nothing the IC industry is considered the new oil industry. A significant characteristic of the semiconductor industry is its complexity and interdependence of the various stakeholders in the chain, which only grew over time. The importance of cooperation and coordination between the players in the semiconductor industry has, therefore, only grown over time. From its early days, the industry has, with Moore’s law as an important driving force, focused on miniaturization and increasing chip power and energy efficiency. Since the beginning of the 21st century, industry has begun to pay attention to its environmental sustainability. It became increasingly clear that collaboration in research, development, and manufacturing processes along the production chain became even more essential.

This paper outlines these developments and shows what this meant for key Taiwanese and Dutch players. Think of companies like TSMC, ASML, and Philips Semiconductors (now NXP), as well as research institutes like ITRI and imec and universities like Eindhoven University of Technology, National Chiao Tung and National Tsing University. We illustrate how the collaboration between important Taiwanese and Dutch actors changed over time, from a more internal, business-to-business approach to a more open exchange between various stakeholders in the sector, while the focus broadened to include environmental sustainability issues. The cooperation, knowledge exchange, and learning between Taiwanese and Dutch experts started in the 1980s with Philips and TSMC/ITRI. Nowadays, research consortia, like imec – headquartered in Leuven (Belgium) but with research sites in, amongst others, the Netherlands and Taiwan – bring together different players from the global semiconductor supply chain. We outline this development against the growing role of ‘smart solutions’ in today’s society, the increased centralization in the industry, and the changing relationships between the semiconductor industry, academia, and government.

Keywords: Semiconductor industry, Philips, TSMC, ITRI, imec

Ann Heylen is a professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), and director of the International Taiwan Studies Center (ITSC) at the College of Liberal Arts, NTNU. She is a founding member of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) (2004–present), and associate editor of the International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (IJAPS, Malaysia). She publishes on topics covering the history and historiography of Taiwan with special attention to Dutch Formosa, the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). She is currently working on a monograph exploring Formosa media narratives as part of a broader project on the relations between the Low Countries and East Asia.

Dr. Eric Berkers obtained a degree in Economic and Social History from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1990, specializing in the history of business and technology. He worked at the Dutch Economic Historical Archive (NEHA) from 1990 to 1991. Since 1991, he has been a researcher at the SHT (Foundation for the History of Technology) at Eindhoven University of Technology. He received his PhD from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 2002, studying the history of water management in the Netherlands. He has published papers on various topics in the field of history of technology and participated in several research projects on the history of Dutch technology in the 19th and 20th centuries and on the history of Dutch enterprise in the 20th century. He has published on the development of knowledge infrastructure in different fields in the Netherlands, including energy, geodesy, horticulture, food and healthcare. Wrote a book on the history of software in the Netherlands and an EU-funded report on the history of nuclear energy in the Netherlands (HONEST). Commissioned by the Dutch Rathenau Institute, a report on the history of nuclear waste in the Netherlands was written. He is an author and staff member of the global cycling research and publishing initiative “Cycling Cities”. He is also conservator of the Weverijmuseum Geldrop [Weaving Museum Geldrop] in the Netherlands and a board member of the History of Technology section of the Royal Dutch Institute of Engineers (KivI). In addition, he is co-editor of Since 1624, Taiwanese Dutch Connections.

Dr Mila Davids received her Ph.D at the Center for Business History (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and is assistant professor in the Technology Innovation and Society group at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She has published on innovation history, the knowledge infrastructure, and the dissemination of knowledge in various journals, including Business History, Journal of Modern European History, History of Technology, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management (TASM). Davids was the editor of the volume Industrial production, in the 7-volume History of Technology in the Netherlands in the 20^th century and author of The co-evolution of the national knowledge infrastructure and innovations in Dutch business in the 20th century in the series Business in the Netherlands in the 20^th century. Her current research interest concerns cooperation and international knowledge transfer between Dutch and Taiwanese organizations and its importance for technological, societal, and sustainable transitions. She initiated a collaborative research project, ‘The Taiwanese-Dutch connections in historical perspective: cooperation, interactive learning, and circulation of knowledge’.

Tim Riswick is Assistant Professor of Historical Demography at the Radboud Group for Historical Demography and Family History, Department of History, Arts History and Classics, Radboud University, Nijmegen. He obtained his PhD in 2020, based on his dissertation ‘Between Rivalry and Support. The impact of Brothers and Sisters on Infant and Child Mortality Risks in Taiwan and the Netherlands, 1860-1945’. As a researcher, he is specialized in comparative family history in East Asia and Western Europe, 1800-2000. His research focuses on how health inequalities arose in 19th and 20th century societies by studying themes such as epidemics, cause-specific mortality, and hospital patients. In addition, he studies the life courses of Taiwanese during the Japanese colonial period. As an educator, his teaching mainly revolves around themes within global family history, history of Taiwan and China, historical demography, historical life courses and life stories. Furthermore, he is also involved in interdisciplinary teaching modules, such as Health Care Humanities, and the application of AI in teaching.

Jungchen Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of History at National Chi Nan University in Taiwan. Her research focuses on Early Taiwan History, particularly the Dutch era in Taiwan, and Maritime history. 

Kai Yiu Chan is an associate professor of the Department of History, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research topics cover socio-economic, business, and imperial-colonial histories, with particular focuses on Taiwan, China, and Japan, from 1600 to 2000.

Zhao-Zong Wu is assistant research fellow at Taiwan International Institute For Water Education (TIIWE). His research interests lie in the area of the culture of Taiwan history during the Japanese colonial rule period (1910-1945), as well as the cultural heritage of Taiwan (in industrial and water).

Inge Goudsmit is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She is teaching and conducting research in architecture and urban design. Her focus is on urban politics in the social production of space of public cultural buildings and urban commons. Before joining CUHK, Inge practiced architecture for 18 years, and was an Associate Architect at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), where she designed and expedited architectural and urban projects across multiple scales in all development phases in Asia and Europe, among them the Taipei Performing Arts Centre in Taiwan.

Wen-shuo Liao is researcher at the Academia Historica, Taipei, Taiwan. She is the author of a dozen peer-reviewed journal and conference papers delivered through outlets such as Twentieth-Century China, Humanitas Taiwanica, and annual meetings of European Association of Taiwan Studies and Association for Asian Studies. Her research spans cultural diplomacy, international relations, and comparative politics with an emphasis on Nationalist Chinese foreign policies and intelligence in South and Southeast Asia. She is currently completing a book manuscript on Taiwan-India relations (1940s-1990s).

This review of historical materials dealing with major events and issues shaping Taiwan-India relations from the accidental death of an Indian leader in exile on Taiwan in the last month of the Pacific War through the 1990s, when official representations were finally established aims to draw the attention of historians and researchers to the barely used or still relatively unknown government documents and personal papers held in archives of government and academic institutes in Taiwan and abroad. Two significant but largely ignored episodes should be singled out. As it has been argued that it is in India’s interest that Taiwan maintains to be a distinct entity, India was surprisingly eagerly engaged in peace negotiations during the 1950s Taiwan Strait Crises; on the other hand, with the deepening rift between India and the PRC since the end of the 1950s, the Kuomintang government on Taiwan, long having no diplomatic relations with India, considered taking advantage of the situation while observing that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had been in power for many years, suffered serious criticism of his policy towards China. This paper aims to shed new light on untold international settings and political implications that have shaped the history of Cold War and early post-Cold War era in Asia.

Keywords: Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Chiang Kai-shek, 1962 China-India War, military intelligence cooperation, India-Taipei Association

Jessica Marinaccio received her doctorate in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 2019. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills but was most recently employed as a Technical Support Officer in Tuvalu’s Department of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Marinaccio holds a Master’s in Chinese literature from National Taiwan University and has worked as a Mandarin–English interpreter for the Tuvalu Embassy in Taiwan. Jess’s research focuses on Tuvalu–Taiwan cultural diplomacy as well as understandings of diplomacy and indigeneity in Taiwan and its Pacific allies. She has published relevant articles in Issues & Studies, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, International Journal of Cultural Policy, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, and The Contemporary Pacific.

Most published works on China in the Pacific typically also focus on Taiwan, creating the perception that Taiwan’s presence in and interactions with the Pacific are already well understood. However, many of these works center on the geopolitical place of Taiwan in the Pacific and its tension with China over diplomatic recognition. This paper looks at Taiwan from an alternative lens, highlighting another way Taiwan has been historically entangled in the Pacific aside from its geopolitical competition with China: fisheries. In this article, I first provide a broad overview of Taiwan’s entanglement in the economic history of both legal and illegal fisheries in the Pacific from the 1940s to the 1980s and how this reflects longstanding cultural ties between Taiwan and the Pacific. I then examine two case studies of these entanglements: Taiwan’s illegal fishing in Tuvalu and Australia and Taiwan’s legal fishing operations in American Samoa. In both the broad overview and the case studies I present, I attend to the complex relationships between government, private enterprise, and individual people in fisheries-related engagements that often led to unpredictable outcomes divorced from simple government-level or diplomatic sentiment. I also focus on ideas of the various Taiwanese communities mediating Taiwanese fisheries during this period, including Overseas Taiwanese Associations and diaspora communities in places like Australia, the Solomon Islands, and Samoa. In the conclusion, I discuss how we can examine Taiwan’s history as both part of and other to the Pacific region from trans-local, transnational, and cultural perspectives and what this means for our understanding of the Asia and Pacific regions and how they can be reshaped.

Keywords: Taiwan, fisheries, Australia, American Samoa, Tuvalu

Mark Caprio is professor emeritus at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910—1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009). Additionally, he co-edited a volume with Christine De Matos titled Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). He has also authored academic articles on colonial-era issues and Korea’s wartime and immediate postwar history including colonial-era collaboration, Japan-based Korean repatriation, and Korean attitudes toward trusteeship. He is currently working on two book-length manuscripts: a monograph that considers Korean efforts to sweep away Japanese dregs of their colonial legacy and their search for national sovereignty, and an edited volume on Korea-Japan modern relations.

A June 1945 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, “Aliens in Japan,” attempted to estimate the number of non-Japanese residents in Japan that an occupation force would encounter once its war with Japan was completed to predict what possible problems this force might encounter upon arrival, and to provide suggestions for dealing with these problems. Given the size of the Korean population, the majority of the report devoted time discussing the issues in this context for two reasons: 1) Koreans assumed a large majority (95%) of all foreigners in Japan, and 2) these people would not be directly represented among the four allied states (U.S. U.K., the Soviet Union, and nationalist China). The position of Japan-based Taiwanese, whose numbers were much smaller and were represented by the nationalist Chinese whose jurisdiction they would be returned, generated less attention. Despite these differences, both peoples assumed similar concerns: Were the peoples to be considered a “liberated” or “enemy” people? Were there war criminals among them? Would they all want to repatriate to their ethnic homelands, or would a percentage of them wish to remain in Japan? If the latter, how would these people be classified? And, perhaps most importantly, would the Japanese seek to scapegoat these peoples for their defeat, or would the Taiwanese/Korean population seek revenge on their now former colonial subjugators? Should the occupation forces make efforts to separate them from the Japanese upon arrival? The report’s purpose aimed to raise possible issues rather than to provide definite answers. The purpose of this paper is to consider how occupation forces dealt with these and other problems by examining documents left from this era to compare the experiences of Koreans and Taiwanese residents in Japan in the immediate postwar. 

Keywords: postwar, Korean, Taiwanese, ethnic homeland, historical documents

Mike Shi-chi Lan obtained a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. He taught at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and National Chung Cheng University, and is currently an associate professor in the Department of History at National Chengchi University. He also served as a special visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and a visiting researcher at Rikkyo University, Japan. His main research interests include Taiwan history, modern East Asian history, imperialism and World War II, and historical memory.

Historical memories represent the past but at the same time, define the present. How people commemorate their history, especially history of glory and suffering such as the history of wars, defines and is defined by their identity. In modern societies, “national” or “nationalistic” narratives often dominate, if not monopolize, history writing and commemoration of wars as they aim to produce and reinforce “national” identity through historical memories. This kind of national “frame of war” (Judith Butler 2009) not only suppresses the minority or dissenting voices when it comes to commemorating the past but also leads to internal conflict over historical memories. Ironically, the “nationalistic” memory of war, which resulted from international conflict in the past, often leads to international conflict at the present. But at times, minority or dissenting voices within each society manage to represent and commemorate the past in their own way and construct their own historical memories. This paper examines commemorations of the Second World War (WWII) as conducted by local governments and citizen’s groups at the local level in Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia. It finds that a sense of “locality” or local identity has been emphasized in defining the “subject of commemoration” in the text and rituals in commemorations of WWII conducted at the local level. While local commemorations of WWII do not necessarily challenge the “nationalistic” memory of war, they do not reinforce or comply with the latter either. Thereby, this “locality” creates an alternative “frame of war” vis-à-vis the “nationalistic” one, and consequently creates a space to present minority or dissenting voices in historical memories. This paper argues that commemorations based on “locality” allow different “mnemonic communities” to co-exist and lead to a more diverse memory-scape of WWII. Furthermore, as local commemorations offer alternative historical memories beyond the monolithic (and often antagonistic) “nationalistic” memory of war, they offer a possibility for “agonistic memory” (Bull and Hansen 2016) and reconciliation within a society and across national boundaries.

Keywords:  Taiwan, postwar, Malaysia, local identity, memory, commemoration

Hardina Ohlendorf is a lecturer in the Social Science Division of Mahidol University International College (MUIC), Thailand. She got her Ph.D. in politics and international studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Prior to joining MUIC, she worked as a full-time teaching fellow at SOAS and later moved to Taiwan for a postdoctoral research position at the Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica with the Taiwan Fellowship. In her research, Hardina looks at Taiwan’s identity constructions, public space and public memory in post-authoritarian societies, political dimensions of tourism, and Chinese identities in borderland areas.

Taiwan and South Korea share the experience of decades of authoritarian rule followed by transitions to democracy from the late twentieth century onwards. The political transition from authoritarianism to democracy requires a difficult deconstruction and reconstruction of collective memory. New democratic regimes and societies in both countries have had to decide how to confront the authoritarian past and how to integrate the authoritarian pasts into the collective memory. This is an extremely sensitive task since it involves considering the complicity of parts of the national community with the dictatorship. All authoritarian regimes leave some divisive memories in the nation since all dictatorships are built on the support of one part of the national community and its more or less active participation in the repression of the other part. New democratic governments and societies have to choose which national memories to discard so as to distance themselves from the previous dictatorship, which ones to keep so as to preserve a sense of continuity of the national community, and which ones to create so as to build new identity foundations of the young democracy. One area where such memory politics become visible is heritage sites and tourist attractions. South Korea and Taiwan have started to develop new forms of ‘dark’ or political tourism that focus on sites of former authoritarian repression and atrocities. Employing visual methods, narrative analysis and qualitative interviews, this paper examines and compares the strategies and approaches Taiwan and South Korea have adopted in the development of dark tourism sites related to their experience of democratization and human rights advancement and discusses some of the transnational connections that have been forged between both countries in this process of heritage re-construction.  

Keywords: human rights, memory, dark tourism, transitional justice, identity 

Ooi Keat Gin is professor of the modern history of Brunei/Borneo at the Academy of Brunei Studies, University Brunei Darussalam, Brunei and visiting professor of the Korean Institute of ASEAN Studies (KIAS), Busan University of Foreign Studies, Busan, South Korea. With specialization in Borneo, and Southeast Asia in general, his vast scholarly interests are demonstrated in recent book-length works including A Story of George Town, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia c.1780s to c. 2000s (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka 2019), Borneo in the Cold War, 1950–1990 (Routledge 2020), and as editor, Borneo and Sulawesi. Indigenous Peoples, Empires, and Area Studies (Routledge 2020) and Malaysia and the Cold War Era (Routledge 2020). He co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Brunei (Routledge 2023) and co-authored The Handbook of Southeast Asian Studies: Pioneers and Critical Thinkers (Springer in press). An elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London), he currently serves as associate editor of Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies as well as honorary advisor of International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), both Scopus-listed peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Taiwan and the various contemporary nation-states of Southeast Asia shared a common past, namely all experienced imperialism and colonialism, some having a longer duration than others. By the last quarter of the 19th century, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, except Siam (Thailand), were under foreign domination, the former under Imperial Japan, the latter, under Western imperial powers, viz. Britain (Burma, Malaya, Sarawak, Brunei, North Borneo), France (Indochina), the Netherlands (Netherlands East Indies), Spain and the U.S. (the Philippines), and Portugal (Timor). Understandably, having different imperial masters resulted in possessing different experiences of colonialism. Colonial Taiwan and colonial Southeast Asia were incorporated into the economic system of the respective imperial powers, notably the world capitalist market. The onset of the Pacific War (1941-1945) witnessed the implementation of the long-held political doctrine Nanshin-ron (南進論, ‘Southern Expansion Doctrine’, or ‘Southern Road’) whereby Imperial Japan militarily expelled, and in turn, replaced the Western imperial powers over their respective colonial territories in Southeast Asia, again excluding Thailand. Wartime occupied Southeast Asia became a part of Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The present intention is to examine the various experiences of imperialism and colonialism that Taiwan and Southeast Asia had endured, an evaluation of the consequences of foreign domination, and to ascertain the long-term impact and remnants therein in the post-independence period. The said experiences were overall not all bad or all good either. Instead there were various shades and gradations of adverse and beneficial elements, impacts and effects. This study is not an apology for imperialism and/or colonialism. Instead it is an attempt to further understand this period of foreign rule in the historical development of Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Cognizance and acknowledgement of the past contribute to the greater and deeper appreciation of contemporary times and in turn, to foresee a better future.

Keywords: imperialism and colonialism; Taiwan; Imperial Japan; Southeast Asia; Nanshin-ron; Pacific War (1941-1945); Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Frank Dhont (PhD Yale) is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. He specializes in Southeast Asian history, particularly in insular Southeast Asia and Dutch colonial history in Indonesia and the region.  His research focus is on the struggle of the Indonesians against Dutch colonialism from the early age of European colonialism extending into the 20th century and Indonesian independence.  He is the founder and chair of the International Indonesia Forum (IIF). He is particularly interested in the Japanese occupation of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the socio-political changes this brought about in society—especially for ordinary people—and the memory of World War II in the region.

During the Dutch colonial era, the Indonesian nationalists used the media to reach the Indonesian public to try to propagate a concept of a new Indonesian citizen and a new Indonesian. The Japanese era, with its own policies, also emphasized a new world and a new era. The colonial comparative perspective with Taiwan in Japanese projections of modernity will provide an interesting comparative Asian perspective based on the Japanese influence in Asia during World War II. Finally, the paper examines how these various ideas and views interacted in the media of both the Dutch and Japanese eras into the era of the post-war contemporary Indonesian Republic. The paper identifies how Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands all evaluated this modernizing development from different points of view and how in the media the new Indonesian citizen was depicted based on their own ideas and policies. The movement fits within the Asian context, which involves Taiwan and the whole of the Japanese colonial world, especially during World War II. The paper shows how the Indonesian population and leadership were influenced by these various images and concepts propagated during the colonial era but steered by Indonesian thinkers and leaders and shows how individual nations shape their own paths and destinies.

Keywords: media, colonialism, nationalism, development, Indonesia, Taiwan

Chen Yu-jen is Professor at the Department of Taiwanese Culture, Language and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University, and Ph.D. in Humanities from Leiden University. She taught at the Taiwan Food Culture Industry Research Institute of the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, and was invited to serve as a part-time researcher at the Faculty of Literature at Keio University in Japan. Her research interests are food culture and food literature, including the history and culture of “Taiwanese cuisine”, the history of Taiwan’s dairy products. She has published academic papers and journals covering literature, anthropology, history, communication.

Taiwanese food has been viewed as a part of Chinese food because the ancestors of the inhabitants are Han Chinese who migrated to Taiwan since the 17^th century. These Han migrants brought their foodways from mainly the Fujian and Guangdong Provinces, and another wave of migrants from the Chinese mainland moved to Taiwan after the Second World War, further shaping a condensed Chinese culinary map in Taiwan. By contrast, the food culture of the Aborigines, the indigenous people who belong to the Austronesian family, was often marginalized or ignored in the discourse of Taiwanese food culture. Employing “food culture field” as a new analytical concept, this article aims to re-examine the features of “Taiwanese food culture fields” as the contact zone of the East and Southeast Asian food culture fields. By contact zone, it does not only mean a geographical space but also a social field that asserts its presence through bodily experience and symbolic power. Tracing food cultures of the indigenous people, the Han Chinese, and the Japanese in different historical periods before the early 20^th century, this article explores how Taiwan serves as the contact zone and how different issues could be raised from this perspective.

Keywords: Taiwanese food, contact zone, food culture, foodways, Asian food

Yin C. Chuang is associate professor at the Department of Taiwanese Language and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University, deputy director of the Center for International Taiwan Studies at National Taiwan Normal University, producer and host of FTV’s “Taiwan Daily” program, and chairman of the East Asian Popular Culture Society. Professor Chuang is the winner of the National Taiwan Normal University’s 2023 Teaching Excellence Award and the 2012 Teaching Excellence Teacher Award. She has given intensive lectures on Taiwanese culture at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and Kyushu University in Japan. Research and teaching areas include Taiwanese political consumerism, Taiwanese popular culture, political and social movement linguistics (rhetoric), nationalism and national identity, democratization and consumer society, popular music, Taiwanese film and Taiwanese language.

This paper aims to explore how concepts of Taiwan are discursively constructed in contemporary Taiwan popular culture under the influence of its significant others– the US, Japan, China and Korea. Fairclough’s CDA is borrowed as the research framework to investigate how the discourses of Taiwaneseness in contemporary Taiwan popular culture are discursively produced and consumed, (re-)written and (re-)presented between everyday life and non-everyday life (festivals), and also between texts, discourse practices and social practices.

Keywords: Taiwaneseness, popular culture, CDA, identity politics, structures of feeling 

Tsung-yi Michelle Huang is currently a Professor of Geography at National Taiwan University. Her works on East Asian urban cultures have been published in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Narrative Theory, positions: East Asia cultures critique, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs, among others. She is the author of Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai (2004), Articulating New Cultural Identities: Self-Writing of East Asian Global City-Regions (Chinese) (2008), and New Sensations in China and Hong Kong: Politics of Emotion in the Dream of Development. (Chinese) (2020).

Tsung-Lun Alan Wan is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. His research in sociolinguistics addresses issues like disability, migration, and political ideology, with a current focus on the raciolinguistics of Vietnamese spouse accents in Taiwan.

This study is motivated by the premise that the relatively similar stages of national development and shared linguistic resources and cultures between Singapore and Taiwan may foster unique dynamics within the context of transnational marriages. We focus on how co-ethnicity may contribute to the negotiation of intimacy in transnational marriages between Taiwanese and (Chinese) Singaporeans. A total of 43 Taiwanese women who married Singaporean men were interviewed between 2022 and 2024. Adopting the “regime of language” framework, we analyze the narratives of these interviewees to see how Taiwanese female spouses in Singapore navigate the demands of the migration regime, predominantly manifested through language adaptation. This process involves more than adjusting to linguistic proficiency or adopting English to assimilate with Singaporeans—it encompasses conforming to the prevailing language ideologies. Taiwanese wives face scrutiny regarding their language use and identity. First, influenced by the Singaporean government’s encouragement for married women to participate in the workforce, Taiwanese wives are faced with devaluation of their professional capabilities when their English proficiency does not meet local job market standards. In addition to the workplace, Taiwanese women encounter challenges with the English language in daily life. In Singapore’s linguistic regime, different languages are expected to be used in different contexts. This complex sociolinguistic landscape presents significant challenges for migrants in navigating everyday interactions. In the domestic sphere, narratives reveal that Taiwanese wives often confront family members who act as “agents” of the language regime. Husbands, in-laws, and even their own children may criticize their use of English, impacting their maternal roles. Our research contributes to the expanding body of literature on geopolitics, migration, and language use, where the commentary on language among migrants becomes a venue for negotiating social positioning within the host society by leveraging the mundane geopolitical relationships between their home and host countries. Through the case of Taiwanese wives in Singapore, we demonstrate how co-ethnicity and similar national development backgrounds do not necessarily foster intimate narratives among migrants. Instead, it is often the expectation of intimacy that leads to greater frustration and discrepancy from their expectations, thereby intensifying tensions between the host and migrant communities in their narratives.

Yoshihisa Amae has a Ph.D. in political science, University of Hawaii at Manoa and research affiliate at the Center for International Reconciliation Studies at Waseda University, Japan. He has previously taught at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies from 2007 to 2022. Amae specializes in East Asian history and politics, and is interested in Japan-Taiwan relations, in particular Japanese colonial legacy in Taiwan and South Korea. He has published in English, Japanese, and Chinese on topics varying from heritage politics to postcolonial representations and memories. He is currently writing a book on Korean diaspora in postcolonial Taiwan. 

There has been a growing sense of nostalgia for the Japanese colonial past (1895-1945) since the lifting of the martial law in Taiwan in 1987. Such feelings, which had long been suppressed by the KMT government under the marital law (1949-1987), were made known through stories shared by local Taiwanese who received Japanese education. As members of that generation have all nearly passed away, colonial nostalgia has been passed down to younger citizens who did not directly experience Japanese rule. For this generation, Taiwan’s colonial past is, to borrow a term from Foucault, a heterotopia. 

In this paper, I will examine the cycle of colonial nostalgia production and consumption as part of Taiwan popular culture for the past decade. Why does colonial nostalgia resonate and what does it say about Taiwan’s postcoloniality? I see colonial nostalgia circulated in popular culture not as backward-looking, but as future-oriented, a “daily plebiscite” and resistance to the cultural hegemony that threatens their existence as Taiwanese. In other words, the creative cultural industries and their participants can be seen as political entrepreneurs who are recoding what Taiwan is and protecting the sovereignty of the island through reconstructing national imagination. 

This paper will mainly focus on GJ Taiwan 聚珍台灣, a popular bookstore in Tainan, as a case study. I will analyze the products sold there, in-store and online, including photobooks, postcards, maps, board games, stationary, towels, and T-shirts to understand how Taiwan is reconnecting with Japan while distancing with China. 

Keywords: Pro-Japanese; colonial nostalgia; memory; cultural production; popular culture

Professor Joby obtained his PhD in church history from Durham University (UK) in 2006. In 2020, he was awarded a habilitation in Linguistics by UAM Poznan, Poland. He has lectured in Dutch Studies at universities in the UK, South Korea, and Poland. Since 2022, he has been a Research Associate of the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London and since 2023, an Honorary Research Associate and Associate Tutor of the School of History, University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His research focusses on the intersection of Dutch culture, history, and language and other cultures and languages, including indigenous and Sinitic cultures in Taiwan. He has published five books and many academic articles. He authored two articles and co-authored a third on missionary linguistics in Taiwan for the Handbook of Formosan Languages (Leiden, 2023) and authored several articles for the Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies. He is a member of the editorial board of the Dutch Studies journal Internationale Neerlandistiek and acts as a reviewer for Routledge, the Dutch research funding council NWO and for several academic journals. In October 2023, he was awarded a five-month grant by the Center for Chinese Studies to do research on Aboriginal Taiwan.

During the Dutch colonial period in Taiwan, Dutch missionary linguists had contact above all with varieties of two Formosan languages: Siraya and Favorlang. The aim of this paper is to make a comparative study of the texts that were written in each language which were the epistemic outcomes of collaboration between the missionary linguists and indigenous informants. I begin by analyzing which texts were written in each language and answering questions such as who wrote them, how they wrote them, what sources they used, how the texts circulated, and whether they were published. For Siraya, the principal texts are catechisms, a Dutch-Siraya Formulary, a Dutch-Siraya wordlist, the Utrecht Manuscript, and two Dutch-Siraya Gospels: St. Matthew and St. John. Two sets of texts were written for Favorlang. One set consists of prayers, doctrinal statements, and a short catechism, all in Dutch and Favorlang, and the other set comprises five sermons in Favorlang alone. The paper then analyzes how the Dutch missionary linguists working with each language attempted to overcome the gap between their own language and culture and those of the Formosans to write texts in Siraya and Favorlang. For example, whilst earlier texts in Siraya and all the Favorlang texts use Deos for God, later Siraya texts use Alid. The paper explores the reasons for these choices. Another example concerns ‘baptism.’ Whereas the Favorlang texts use a circumlocution meaning ‘to press down in water,’ the Siraya texts use a verb which means ‘to pour water on.’ I shall give further similar examples. The paper, therefore, offers a comparative study of approaches to overcoming the cultural and linguistic gap in Taiwan as well as illustrating how Dutch missionaries worked with Formosan informants to bridge this gap, in an early example of transnational collaboration.

Keywords: Siraya, Favorlang, epistemic outcomes, missionary linguists, indigenous informants, cultural and linguistic gap

Darryl Cameron Sterk is a scholar of Indigenous translation in Taiwan, particularly between Mandarin and Seediq. Along these lines he has written a monograph Indigenous Cultural Translation: A Thick Description of Seediq Bale (Routledge, 2020), and a number of articles, including two in 2022: 1. “Inclusive Development, Translation and Indigenous-Language Pop: Yoku Walis’s Seejiq Hip Hop” (Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, 21: pp. 183–202); 2. “Pedagogical Devices: On the Subtitling of Atayalic Speech in Indigenous Film from Taiwan,” (Babel, 68.3: pp. 416–440). He is now working on Indigenous autoethnobotanical translation in Taiwan, about which he’s written a short essay, and ecotranslation in Hong Kong and other Sinophone cities. In addition to being a scholar, he is also a teacher and a translator. As a teacher, he tries to teach basic linguistics courses Socratically. As a translator, he started out as a freelancer, doing technical, military, pharmaceutical, and legal translation. Since 2007 he has been a literary translator. His most notable literary translation is probably Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man With the Compound Eyes. His translations of Wu Ming-Yi’s Stolen Bicycle (Text, 2017) and Kevin Chen’s Ghost Town (Europa, 2022) were longlisted for international prizes.

Exotic plants are defined as those that have been introduced inadvertently or deliberately by human beings. So the plants that migrated over the land bridge between what is now the mainland and the “island” of Formosa during the last ice age can be considered native, while those brought to Formosa since the Proto-Austronesian settlement are “exotic.” Proto-Austronesian settlers introduced plants at a rate of approximately one every three hundred years, while the rate of introduction has been accelerating since the Dutch colonized Taiwan in 1624. Plants during the Dutch era were introduced at a rate of about one per year, which can be compared with recent estimates of invasive plant species introduction at about ten per year. In addition to presenting quantitative data on the rate of exotic plant introduction since Proto-Austronesian settlement, this paper will suggest the “palimpsest” as a metaphor for Taiwan’s landscape over the years. 

Keywords: exotic plant species, invasive species, Taiwan, ecology

Dr. WANG, Chi-Sui, born in Taitung. She obtained her Ph.D. in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK. She is a visual artist, curator, researcher and animation festival director and film producer. Since 2004, she began her academic career and used to lecture in Ireland (2008-13, Dublin City University) and in Taiwan, currently, she is a professor in Animation Department, Taipei National University of the Arts. Her artistic practice and academic research have been focusing on the temporality perception and the quest of searching for her indigenous roots, disseminated through exhibition and publication internationally. Her recent exhibitions include Visual Tense (2016) at Kaohsiung Fine Art Museum, Linger – a reluctance to leave (2022) at NCKU Art Center, and The Water No Silence at Pingtung Fine Art Museum (2023).

In this presentation, I will delineate the rationale behind the production of this pedagogical animated film, elucidate the key participants involved, and provide insights into the production progress, encountered challenges, and their respective resolutions. The Ma-tau Incident (1629-1636) stands as a seminal series of conflicts in 17th-century Taiwan. In 1629, the indigenous inhabitants of the Ma-tau settlement, predominantly comprised of the Siraya and Taivoan tribes during the Dutch colonial period, decisively defeated 63 Dutch individuals affiliated with the Dutch East India Company. Subsequently, six years later, in 1635, the Dutch East India Company retaliated against the Siraya people by orchestrating a military assault on the Ma-tau settlement, coinciding with the anniversary of the initial attack. Faced with this aggressive response, the Ma-tau tribal community found themselves compelled to sign the “Mattau Accord” with the Dutch East India Company. The Mattau Incident exemplifies the intricate interplay between Taiwan’s indigenous population and European colonizers during the colonial era, characterized by entrenched conflicts and military engagements. These events have left indelible imprints on Taiwan’s historical trajectory and cultural landscape, constituting an indispensable facet of its historical inquiry.

Keywords: animation (on production), pedagogical, Mattau Incident, Siraya, Dutch, Taiwan indigenous

Manjusha Kuruppath is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Historical Contextualization on the GLOBALISE project at the Huygens Institute, Amsterdam. She completed her doctoral degree at the University of Leiden (2014) and her dissertation was brought out as a book titled Staging Asia: The Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam Theatre by Leiden University Press in 2016. Her thesis investigated the information flows in early modern Asia and how they contributed to the dramatization of contemporary Asian political events in the Dutch Republic. She taught early modern global history at Brasenose College (2016-2017, 2021) and Pembroke College (2018-2019) in Oxford. Like the book, her articles have focused on global history and how the Dutch encounter with Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was captured in writing in VOC records, Dutch travel accounts and literary works.

From 1624 when they established themselves on the island till the 1660s when they were expelled, the Dutch East India Company (also known as the VOC) possessed a sustained presence in Taiwan as colonizers. The archives that they created offer fascinating and vital insight into all aspects of existence on the island rendering them an invaluable source for studying the history of Taiwan. Crippling challenges such as the difficulty of reading early modern Dutch handwriting and the inability to search the corpus other than through traditional methods have meant that these archives have not been exploited to their fullest potential in uncovering histories of Taiwan. The GLOBALISE project, through infrastructural innovation, pulls down these barriers by transforming access into the VOC archives. It revolutionizes research by making five million pages of VOC archives machine-readable. It additionally uses methods of semantic and historical contextualization to enable users to ask complex and precise questions about the archive. This paper will focus on the GLOBALISE project and describe its efforts in opening up the VOC archives. In light of the work undertaken thus far (the publication of historical datasets and the first versions of the machine-readable transcriptions of the archive), the paper will share the first results of the project. It will evaluate the potential impact that the project and its proposed infrastructural initiative can have on how the archives are accessed, searched and studied. It will also probe the possible limits and implications of the searchability that the project offers. Furthermore, the paper will also reflect on how the GLOBALISE project can transform the landscape of history writing pertaining to Taiwan and the bearing it can have in facilitating the writing of new histories of Taiwan’s encounter with the rest of the world.  

Keywords: Dutch East India Company, Taiwan, digital history, handwritten text recognition, contextualization. 

Yu-sheng Huang obtained a PhD in 2006, Department of Biology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA (Mentor: Dr. James B. McClintock). He has been Teaching Assistant, Department of Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (2001 – 2006). In May 2021, he was appointed Professor, Department of Marine Recreation, NPUST, and in August 2021 elected Chair, Department of Marine Recreation, NPUST. Yu-sheng Huang’s research includes marine ecology, sponge classification, ecology and biodiversity, biostatistics, scientific and technological diving surveys. He has a long-term research collaboration with Dutch scholar Nicole de Voogd at Leiden University.

The historical ties between the Netherlands and Taiwan trace back to the 17th century when the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established its presence in East Asia. During this period, the VOC seized control of the Penghu Islands (also known as the Pescadores) from the Ming Dynasty of China in 1622, albeit for a brief period, leaving behind a cultural legacy in Taiwan. In recent years, collaborative efforts in marine biology between the two nations have flourished. Commencing with a marine sponge taxonomy workshop at National Sun-Yet Sen University in 2007, this collaboration has yielded over 20 journal papers covering diverse topics such as Taiwanese marine sponge biodiversity, sponge-associated microbials and their functional roles, nutrient translocation between endo-symbiotic microbes and the sponge host, sponge natural products and their bio-active application, and the discovery of new sponge species from unique habitats. In 2023, six undergraduate students embarked on a scientific diving and marine ecology survey course in Taiwan, further solidifying the collaborative effort. This productive partnership in marine biology between the Netherlands and Taiwan is poised to continue, with anticipated growth in research projects, scholars, students, resources, funding, and collaborative endeavors.”

Chantalle Rietdijk is an Assistant Professor at the Program of Smart Sustainable Development and Management at National Taipei University. She obtained a PhD from the Department of Geography at National Taiwan Normal University in 2022, with her dissertation titled, ‘Social Housing Implementation in a Post-Political City? An Investigation into Housing Justice in the Greater Taipei Metropolitan Area’. Her expertise encompasses housing studies and urban geography, wherein she employs critical inquiry to analyse processes that concern social justice in an urban context. Currently, her research projects include a study on the politics of housing development projects in flood-prone areas in Semarang, Indonesia, and a study on the role of private landlordism in social re-stratification in the Greater Taipei region.

This comparative study delves into the evolution of social housing policies and their impact on urban development in the Netherlands and Taiwan. Despite contrasting historical contexts and housing ideologies, both nations face common challenges in providing affordable housing amidst rising property prices and shifting demographics. The Netherlands’ rich history of social housing provision contrasts with Taiwan’s traditional emphasis on homeownership. However, recent collaborations and policy exchanges between the two countries have sparked a transformative process, with Taiwan adopting elements of the Dutch model to address its housing crisis. This study employs the technique of ‘following the policy,’ wherein the role of international knowledge exchange in the conceptualisation and implementation of Taiwan’s housing policy was examined. Grassroots activism and personal connections are found to be of particular importance in this process. Lastly, this study examines the challenges and opportunities faced by the Netherlands and Taiwan in sustaining their social housing initiatives.

Keywords: policy mobility, affordable housing, housing justice, policy transfer

Dr Mucahid Mustafa Bayrak (莫家俊) is an Associate Professor in Geography at National Taiwan Normal University and an Associate Editor for the journals Climate and Development; Weather, Climate, and Society; and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. For the past 10 years, he has conducted research on development issues of Indigenous and local communities from a political ecology perspective in East and Southeast Asia. His research interests also include sustainable tourism management, climate resilience, and traditional ecological knowledge systems.

Dr. Lung-chih Chang is Director of the National Museum of Taiwan History. He received his BA and MA in History from the National Taiwan University and his PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. His research interests include social and cultural history, comparative colonialism, historiography and public history. Before coming to the NMTH in 2021, Dr. Chang served as deputy Director of the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica and taught at National Cheng-Chih University, National Taiwan Normal University and National Ching-Hua University. He has been a visiting scholar at Tokyo University, Cambridge University and Heidelberg University and offered MOE Taiwan Lectures on Chinese Studies at Oxford University and Oslo University.

Dr Hung-yi Chien is an assistant professor in the Department of History at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). She obtained her PhD from the Department of Taiwan Studies at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Before joining NCKU in 2022, she did postdoctoral studies at Academia Sinica, NTNU, the National Taipei University of Education, and Ruhr University Bochum. She published academic papers on Taiwan history, the Psalmanazar affair, and other fields. Since joining NCKU, her primary research interest has been the development of Taiwan studies and its genealogy of knowledge in early modern Europe. She participates in international Taiwan studies programs, such as “Taiwan als Pionier”, funded by the German government. Her expertise also includes Taiwan’s education history, indigenous Formosan, and Hakka studies. Besides research, she teaches Taiwan history from the sixteenth to eighteenth century at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Seng-hian Lau is an associate professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. He specializes in the study of Taiwanese syntax and pragmatics, employing comparative perspectives. Lau is a passionate advocate for the revitalization and learning of the Taiwanese language. In addition to his academic contributions, he has published a topic-based Taiwanese grammar, a Taiwanese textbook designed for English speakers, and a science-fiction work centered around syntax.

Astrid Lipinsky studied at Bonn University, Germany. Her doctoral thesis was published as „Der Chinesische Frauenverband. Eine kommunistische Massenorganisation unter marktwirtschaftlichen Bedingungen.“ After a post-doc position at National Taiwan University (Department of Law), she was appointed in Sinology at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna in Austria in 2008 and has been Managing Director of its Vienna Center for Taiwan Studies (www.vcts.univie.ac.at) since its establishment in 2009. She teaches Taiwan courses on the BA and MA levels with a focus on transitional justice, gender and LGBTQ+. In addition, she has held interim professorships both in Vienna, the German universities of Duisburg-Essen, Goettingen and Wuerzburg and the Chinese University of Political Science & Law, Beijing, PRC. For Dr. Lipinsky‘s projects and publications, please see www.sinojus-feminae.eu.

Mark McConaghy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, as well as Director of the Center for the Humanities at the university. His research focuses on modern Chinese and Taiwanese literary and intellectual history. His writings have appeared in the leading journals in his field, including China Information, Modern China, The International Journal of Taiwan Studies, The Journal of Asian Studies, Asian Studies Review, and more. He also served as a contributing translator to the volume Voices from the Chinese Century: Public Intellectual Debate from Contemporary China (Columbia University Press, 2019), as well as Wang Hui’s The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Harvard University Press, 2023). Along with professor Lai Hsi-san, he is co-founder of the Global Sinology Platform at NSYSU (https://sinology.nsysu.edu.tw). 

Corrado Neri is associate professor at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3. He is director of CEFC TAIPEI (Centre Etudes France Chine/French Centre for Research on Contemporary China). He has conducted extensive research on Chinese cinema in Beijing and Taipei and published many articles in books and magazines (in English, French and Italian). His book Tsai Ming-liang on the Taiwanese film director appeared in 2004 (Venezia, Cafoscarina). Ages Inquiets. Cinémas chinois: une représentation de la jeunesse, was printed in 2009 (Lyon, Tigre de Papier). His third book, Retro Taiwan: Le temps retrouvé dans le cinéma sinophone contemporain, has been published for l’Asiathèque (Paris, 2016). He co-edited (with Kirstie Gormley ) a bilingual (french/english) book on Taiwan cinema (Taiwan cinema/Le Cinéma taiwanais, Asiexpo, 2009); Global Fences (with Florent Villard, IETT, 2011); Reinventing Mao: Maoisms and National Cinemas/La Réinvention de Mao. Maoïsmes et Cinémas Nationaux (Special issue of Cinéma & Cie International Film Studies Journal (with Marco Dalla Gassa, Federico Zecca) and Politics and Representation in Sinophone Cinema after the 1980s/Politique et Représentation dans le Cinéma Sinophone après 1980 (Special #55 de Monde Chinois Nouvelle Asie, with Jean-Yves Heurtebise). 

Deasy Simandjuntak is both a political scientist and a political anthropologist. She completed her PhD in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deasy is currently Assistant Professor at National Chengchi University (NCCU)’s International College of Innovation. A recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship in 2020, Deasy was Visiting Associate Fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), Academia Sinica, Taipei. Deasy publishes on Indonesian democracy/politics and Southeast Asian democracy and regularly gives comments in the mass media. She is co-editor of Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (ISEAS Publishing, 2018). Her most recent publication is “Disciplining the Accepted, Amputating the Deviants: Segregated Religious Citizenship in Indonesia,” Asian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Joris van den Tol  is an assistant professor of economic history at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He specializes in the history of the Dutch Republic in a globalized world. He has published on petitions, lobbying, and slavery in the early modern period.

(bio pending)

Courtney Work is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnology at the National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Her research is focused in the rural areas, especially in regions transforming from forest to developed, settled landscapes. Areas of expertise and interest include the Anthropology of Religion, Development, and the Environment; the History of Southeast Asian political formations; and the Contemporary Political Economy of Climate Change. Specializing in Engaged Research Methods, topics include the interactions between humans and the non-human world in the context of changing environmental conditions with an emerging focus on socio-spatial relationships with plants, medicine, and free nature.

Dr Yan Ying is the Director of the Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Leicester, UK. She is currently working on a British Academy-funded project on Taiwan museums and translation. She has published on Chinese American literature and autobiographical writing and translation. She is also an active literary translator and has translated works of Marilynne Robinson, Martin Amis and other writers.

Elizabeth Zeitoun is Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. Her major research interests lie in Austronesian linguistics, morphosyntax, typology, historical linguistics. She is specialized in Rukai, Saisiyat, Tsou and has worked on many other Formosan languages (among other Pazeh-Kaxabu, Bunun, Thao, Kanakanavu and Saaroa). She has published a number of sketch grammars in Chinese, and two major monographs on Rukai and Saisiyat. She has been Acting Editor and later Executive Editor of Language and Linguistics from April 2008 through June 2013 and is one of the editors of the Handbook of Formosan languages: The indigenous languages of Taiwan (Brill).

Bogdan Zemanek studied psychology and ethnology; obtained a PhD in ethnology at Jagiellonian University in 2006 and was employed there as an assistant professor; in 2011 promoted to associate professor, Institute of Middle and Far East Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. In 2011 worked as an assistant researcher in National Chengkung University, Tainan; in 2013 as a researcher in Academia Sinica, Taipei. His research interests focus on collective memory in East Asia.  His recent work deals with Western sources of Polish 19th-century press descriptions of East Asia.