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Taiwan Studies Summer School 2026
Key information
- Date
- to
- Venue
- SOAS Main Building
- Room
- DLT & KLT
- Event type
- Conference
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to host the SOAS Taiwan Studies Summer School 2026, bringing together scholars, practitioners, filmmakers, and students for a week of discussion on some of the most pressing and generative questions in Taiwan studies today.
This year’s programme is organised around three broad themes:
- the death penalty, social justice, and modernities
- queer Taiwan, memory, and social worlds
- AI, activism, and digital futures.
Across lectures, roundtables, screenings, book talks, and the Centre of Taiwan Studies Student Symposium, the Summer School will explore Taiwan from a wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, while foregrounding the island’s significance as a site of political, cultural, and intellectual inquiry.
The programme features leading scholars and speakers working on history, anthropology, media, literature, sexuality, law, technology, and documentary film. Through this varied and intensive programme, the Summer School seeks to offer ca space for sustained conversation on Taiwan’s pasts, presents, and possible futures.
Image credit: Joel Fulgencio via Unsplash
Schedule
Friday 26 June
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:30am to 12 noon | Taiwan’s bumpy road to energy transition: nuclear debate, semiconductor dominance, and energy security | Dr Chao Chia-Wei | DLT |
| 1:00pm to 2:30pm | Negotiating political imaginaries in Taiwan: identifications and the recasting of the nation(s) in geopolitical context | Dr Stéphane Corcuff | DLT |
| 3:00pm to 5:00pm | The death penalty in Taiwan: controversies and counter-narratives | Saul Lehrfreund, Lin Hsin-yi, Dr Lee Chia-hua, and Professor Carolyn Hoyle | DLT |
| 6:00pm to 9:00pm | Documentary screening and director Q&A: Me and My Condemned Son | Dr Lee Chia-hua | DLT |
Monday 29 June
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:45am to 12:15pm | The human in the loop: relay literary translation and minoritised languages in the AI era | Dr Darryl Sterk | KLT |
| 1:00pm to 3:00pm | Documentary screening and director Q&A: The Lost Youth: Women and Industrial Work in Taiwan | Ke Wan-ching | KLT |
| 3:30pm to 5:00pm | Book talk: 'Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan' | Professor Lee An-Ru | KLT |
| 7:00pm to 8:30pm | The multiple trajectories of a Taiwanese-centric history | Dr Evan Dawley | KLT |
Tuesday 30 June
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:30am to 12 noon | After equality: queer television, fan labour, and sapphic memory in Taiwan | Dr Eva Cheuk-Yin Li | KLT |
| 1:00pm to 4:30pm | Centre of Taiwan Studies Student Symposium | Student presenters | KLT |
| 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Roundtable: Doing fieldwork in Taiwan | Professr Lee An-Ru, Professor Wang Hong-Zen, Sam Robbins, Chengyu Yang | KLT |
Wednesday 1 July
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:30am to 12 noon | Becoming Taiwanese beyond control: reflections on a book in the wild | Dr Evan Dawley | KLT |
| 1:00pm to 2:30pm | Digital democracy in Taiwan: opening the internet in the Ma and Tsai era | Sam Robbins | KLT |
| 3:00pm to 4:30pm | Navigating intimacy and queer entrepreneurship: relational work in Taiwanese lesbian couples’ business endeavors | Professor Wang Hong-zen | KLT |
| 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Documentary screening of ‘Mrs.Islets’ | N/A | KLT |
Thursday 2 July
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:30am to 12 noon | Digital sovereignty in Taiwan: controlling the internet in the Tsai and Lai Era | Sam Robbins | KLT |
| 1:00pm to 2:30pm | Born relay translated? Translating Syaman Rapongan’s 'Mata nu Wawa' | Dr Darryl Sterk | KLT |
| 3:00pm to 4:30pm | Tabloid female sex confessions and everyday pro-sex feminism: the case of the Apple Daily Taiwan | Dr Yow-Jiun Wang | KLT |
| 6:00pm to 8:00pm | Documentary screening: 'I Dream of the Ocean' | N/A | KLT |
Friday 3 July
| Time | Title | Speaker | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:30am to 12 noon | Articulating the sinicisation process in a Taiwan Paiwan Indigenous village: Vusam culture as a resilience pivot | Professor Wang Hong-zen | KLT |
| 1:00pm to 2:30pm | Book talk: 'Why Taiwan? Anthropological Perspectives' | Professor Lee An-Ru | KLT |
| 3:00pm to 5:00pm | Roundtable: Bringing Taiwan studies to wider audiences: publications, media, and public engagement | Dr Evan Dawley, Professor Cheng Ling-Fang, Dr Ming-Yeh Rawnsley, Professor Dafydd Fell | KLT |
