international journal of taiwan studies 2 (2019) 169-176 brill.com/ijts
Conference Report ∵
The 3rd World Congress of Taiwan Studies: ‘Taiwan in the Globalized World: The Relevance of Taiwan Studies to the Social Sciences and Humanities’, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 6–8 September 2018
Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (soas), University of London, u.k. [email protected]
The realisation of a regular worldwide meeting platform for the Taiwan studies community—World Congress of Taiwan Studies (wcts)—is one of the land- mark initiatives that has helped facilitate the institutionalisation of Taiwan studies as a field in recent years. The 1st wcts took place in Taiwan in 2012.1 One of its major legacies was to solidify formal support from the management of Academia Sinica for the establishment of a wcts secretariat under the lead- ership of Professor Hsin-huang Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌) as secretary-general. This helped sustain the wcts and made possible the subsequent organisation of the 2nd wcts in 2015 in London2 and the 3rd in 2018 in Taipei.3
1 The 1st wcts took place on 26–28 April 2012 in Taipei and was jointly organised by 11 insti- tutes and centres under the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of Academia Sinica. See https://wcts.sinica.edu.tw/wctsI/02_01_en.php. 2 The 2nd wcts took place on 18–20 June 2015 in London and was co-organised by Academia Sinica and the Centre of Taiwan Studies, soas, University of London. See https://wcts.sinica .edu.tw/wctsII/02_01_en.php. 3 The 3rd wcts took place on 6–8 September 2018 in Taipei and was jointly organised by Aca- demia Sinica and Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. See https://wcts.sinica.edu.tw/03_en.php.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi 10.1163/24688800-00201008
Upon closer examination of the main themes taken up by the three world congresses, one obtains an insight into some of the organisational trajecto- ries and intellectual visions of the organisers. Michael Hsiao recounted that when he worked on Southeast Asian studies in the early 1990s, he noticed that Taiwan studies at Academia Sinica was the weakest (next to nonexistent) among all the area studies at the time. Thus, he has always intended to boost the study of Taiwan. With the support of the then vice president of Academia Sinica, Vincent Wang (王汎森), Hsiao organised a pilot conference entitled ‘Taiwan Studies in Taiwan and Beyond’ in 2010. The success of the event en- abled Hsiao to subsequently mobilise ten humanities and social science insti- tutes and the Research Center for Environmental Changes within Academia Sinica to take part in the inaugural wcts two years later.4 The result was a pro- gramme consisting of two keynote speeches, 26 sessions, 102 papers, and over 700 participants from all over the globe and across a wide range of disciplines. It was the first scholarly conference on Taiwan studies of this magnitude with such a diverse interdisciplinary interest held anywhere in the world. If the 1st wcts meant to showcase and reach out to potential talent, the objectives of the 2nd wcts were to survey and review the field. The gathering in London remained the largest Taiwan studies convention ever hosted in Eu- rope to date, featuring in total three keynote speeches, 16 academic panels, 80 papers, four roundtables, one concert, one film screening, and attracting over 500 people from different continents. The conference was structured around two premises: ‘Taiwan Studies State of the Field’ and ‘Taiwan Studies Revisited’. The organisers invited prominent researchers who met two criteria: (1) They had published an influential book or body of work in the field and (2) they had been active in the international Taiwan studies networks, that is, major Taiwan studies conferences such as the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies, European Association of Taiwan Studies (eats), North American Taiwan Stud- ies Association (natsa), or Japanese Association of Taiwan Studies (jats), as well as the various Taiwan studies centres and programmes at universities in Europe, North America, and Australia (Fell & Hsiao, 2015). As the organisers have admitted, to a large extent the academic panels of the 2nd wcts ‘were de- signed to reflect the key areas that are addressed in international Taiwan Stud- ies research and teaching’ (Fell & Hsiao, 2015). Hence after the initial round of invitations based on recommendations from the two co-organisers—School of Oriental and African Studies (soas) and Academia Sinica—together with an input from the eats Board, the remaining gaps on the panels were filled by
4 Michael Hsiao, in discussion with the author, September 2018, Taipei.
international journal of taiwan studies 2 (2019) 169-176