 Okay, so welcome to this discussion about 20 years of SOAS Taiwan studies. My name is David Fehlal, I'm the co-director of the SOAS Center of Taiwan Studies. And Irene, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. Hi, I'm Irene and I'm the president of the SOAS Diplomatic Society. And Irene is also one of our former students. So she's seen the Taiwan study program from a different angle to me. So Irene, you had some questions for me? Yes. So I thought we could start with something very basic. So how did the Center for Taiwan Studies come about and what was the purpose of its creation? So the Taiwan program started in 1999 and I can't claim to be the founder because that was the year I came to SOAS as a student. So a first year PhD student and I didn't really know we had a Taiwan Studies program until quite late in my first year because it was very quiet. There were maybe a handful of events and maybe in those days we had an annual conference. Or maybe a conference every two years perhaps. But it was only my second year of my PhD that I became more aware of what was going on because they created our first Taiwan Studies course. And I audited about a few weeks of that course. But I think there were a number of reasons why they wanted to do that. I think the mid to late 1990s interest in Taiwan was growing with more academic publications. And people were starting to become interested in Taiwan because of economic success and Taiwan's democratization. So I was really lucky to be there at the right time. So arriving almost exactly 20 years ago. And so how did you get more involved? I became more involved towards the end of my PhD. So in 2002 I started doing a little bit of teaching on our Taiwan course. And I joined one of the events. So that was my first teaching experience. Teaching a little bit of Taiwan politics. A little bit of Taiwan modern history. Because one of the teachers had left. So that was how I became a little bit more involved. And then in 2003 I got a post-doc job at the centre. So I was doing a little bit of teaching. And I had a chance to get my research publication started. So basically since 2003 I've been working full-time at Stardust. Okay, great. So since you've witnessed the creation or the start of the Centre for Family Studies what are in your opinion the major milestones and achievements? Yes, that's a really difficult question. Because there's so many. And I'll try and be as brief as I can. I think the first thing I have to talk about is the teaching programme. Because most Taiwan Studies programmes don't really pay much attention to teaching. But at Stardust we're quite different. So we started off with one course. A year long course that taught a little bit of everything. A little bit of society, history, economics and politics. And then gradually over time we expanded the Taiwan courses. So that we now have more Taiwan courses than any other university in Europe or North America. We have undergrad politics of Taiwan course which you took. A year long postgraduate course on Taiwan politics. We have a comparative Taiwan politics course. Taiwan film, Taiwan culture and society. And of course we have I think the only course of spoken Taiwanese. Which elementary hockey which is available for undergrad and post grads. And because we have so many courses that also meant that we could create a master of Taiwan studies. That we created back in 2005. And we're still thinking about how can we expand our courses. Because I think this is something quite special. I think there's only two universities in the world that have Taiwan studies degrees outside of Taiwan. So it's just so us and Texas, Austin. So I think that's a key achievement. A second one I would mention is creating the European Association of Taiwan Studies. That we created back in 2004. And it's now, it's the key event in the European Taiwan Studies calendar. We created that at SOAS and now it runs very, very well. It's also very good for our students. Because every year a number of SOAS students, both PhDs and master, even undergraduate students will give presentations at the European conference. So currently we're just a few months away from the next conference. And I think we've got three of our undergraduates and post grads will be presenting. So I think that was really quite special. I think it's gone on to do a lot of things. So for example, they have scholarships from the European Association now. And I think it's really helped promote Taiwan studies beyond the UK. So I think that was quite special. The next thing I would mention is publications. And back in 2009 we created a Taiwan Studies book series. And many of the books that we publish in the series we use for teaching. We've now published 27 books since 2009. That's a lot. It's really great. It means that we have some of my favourite events of book launches where the authors come and talk about their work. And I try and look for book projects that will be useful for our teaching. So one of them that my colleague published back in 2011 was Taiwan Democracy, Economic and Political Challenges. And it's also nice if we can do paperback books which we don't do enough of. I think the other thing that is wonderful in our programme in terms of achievements is our events programme. So when I first started, maybe we had two or three events a year when I was a student. But nowadays we have between 60 and 70 events. That's right. So again, that's more than any other European or American university. But of course, and some events are particularly special. So if I was going to choose one event that was particularly special then I would choose the second World Congress of Taiwan Studies. We held when you were first year PhD student back in June of 2015 the biggest ever conference in Europe. And we had something like 70 or 80 speakers coming to see us over three days. So we still kind of have fond memories of those crazy three days. Not only did we have academic panels but we had a film screening and we had a concert where Li Zhenxia gave his first. I think his first ever UK concert. That was very, very special. In terms of the kind of the long term conferences or events we've organised I would probably want to highlight a couple. One of them is our film week, which we run every February of a reading week. And that's allowed us to bring some quite amazing Taiwanese film directors, actors, producers, script writers. And that was the event that we just held last week. We've done that now for six years. And again we try and do screen films that are kind of relevant for our courses. So it's very political, social movements. And then lastly I would probably highlight our summer school, which we run every summer. Usually in late June or early July. We kind of bring in speakers, we have film screenings but it's also a great opportunity for our students to actually give presentations about their dissertation projects. So long as they have a Taiwan focus. But we do these as open events. So a lot of participants will come from other universities or other European countries. So it's a very special moment. Great. And last year I think was the year we started the program for Taiwan Indigenous studies. So what was the rationale behind it? Yes, I mean we had events about Taiwan's Indigenous people occasionally for a number of years. But it was something that I always felt we should give a little bit more attention to. I thought that Indigenous studies had been neglected in mainstream Taiwan studies. But for me it seemed that it was something that, so long as we could link it with the kind of things that we do. So so long as we had political science, speakers, literature, history, film, social movement topics. Then we could kind of link it with the kind of things we toured. I think Taiwan's Indigenous people are something that does really make Taiwan special. I think the fact that Taiwan is the Austronesian homeland. So it means that Taiwan has links to people in Madagascar, New Zealand, Hawaii, both in terms of culture and languages. So I think that's a key element in Taiwan's public diplomacy. It's a way of kind of breaking out of its international isolation. So I'm quite pleased that I wanted to do this for a long time. And it's also quite interesting working with a Taiwanese museum, because they're the ones, it's the stream museum for Mosin and Bridginins that funds this project. So it's a little bit different from working with a government organisation. But I would say it's something that I'm quite excited about in terms of, again, it's a publication project. So we have events, but I'm hoping to have a new textbook on issues related to contemporary Taiwanese Indigenous peoples. And I feel there's a bit of a gap in the literature there. And then maybe one day we can actually run a course on Taiwanese Indigenous peoples. I think I'll definitely give that a try in one of our future summer schools. Do you think the studies for Taiwan that we're doing so far have improved people-to-people exchanges between the UK and Taiwan? I think for sure, I think we can see the impact in many areas. This is perhaps why Robert Ash, who was the former director, won the, it's called the Republic of China Friendship Award. I think he was just the second person from the UK to win that medal. And I think the justification was his role in developing UK, Taiwan academic links. I think so, we can see this in many ways. One way is also the number of Taiwanese academics that we bring into science and the way that they engage with our students and share their research. Because I would say that a pretty high proportion of our speakers are from Taiwan, not necessarily based in Taiwan, but I think generally often they are. And I think another thing I would mention here is academic exchange programs. Many of our conferences or book projects are collaborative with Taiwanese universities. So for example, we had a project on migration to and from Taiwan that became a book called Migration to and From Taiwan which was the product of collaboration between Taiwan's Georgetown University and Georgetown University. And we also had a project also with Academia Sinica on Taiwanese political parties. Again, it led to a journal publication. So that's really the way that we work together often, but we find a theme and Taiwanese scholars to work with. And we'll see if we can put together a conference and then a book publication. So many of the books that we publish in our series were presented in the first format at a conference of solace. Oh, that's really exciting. And so this is a bit more of a fun question, but out of all the Taiwan-related courses you offer in solace, which ones are your favorite? Well, I'm pretty sure that each of us will have a different answer to that because I think the fact that we can teach courses that are so close to the things that we research is one of the attractions for working in solace. I think that you probably notice how kind of excited we look in class. Yes, definitely. And because I study Taiwanese political parties, social movements, elections, and I can spend something like 11-12 weeks kind of indulging in my favorite topics and doing analysis together with students of election advertising. So I would definitely pick the two year law and politics classes. They're particularly close to my heart. But I think I also actually really enjoy our Northeast Asia politics class, which is a comparative one. And I suppose I like that one because it's a course where I can get to know, I learn a lot from the class. In other words, I learn a lot about Japan and South Korea and I kind of force those Japan and South Korea specialists to get to know about Taiwan. So I really look forward to my teaching. And I think that would be one... I often meet colleagues at other universities and they often really hate teaching because it's often quite distant from their research. But in contrast, in my classes I can actually use my own work. I can use my own publications. And then I get a different set of feedback. That's very special. That's really great. And finally, what are the projects to come for the separate Taiwan studies in the next year? Well, 2019 looks very exciting. I think for a number of reasons. I think one of course is the fact that we are coming towards our 20th anniversary. And we're trying to think about what we should do to celebrate. So in a way, our conversation today is kind of like the start of our celebrations of our 20th anniversary. Probably I would also want to do a similar kind of conversation with Bob Ash, the founder of the center. Because I also want to know how it started. Why? Because I was kind of an outsider in those early days. Why is a person who specializes in Chinese agricultural economics, create a Taiwan program? That's something I really want to know. So I'm going to try and push him on that. I might also try and... One idea I've got is to try and get together people who were there at the first Taiwan studies conference in the summer of 2000. And get there to talk about how they view Taiwan over the last two decades. I think that would be really quite interesting. It's one of my plans. When would this conference take place? I'm not sure. It would make sense, I think, to do it in the autumn of maybe a way of starting the 20th year. So I would need to find out who were the speakers and who were still around. Because some of them probably have retired now. But I think it should be quite special. In terms of this academic year, I think we still have some pretty exciting events coming up. We still have a couple more events on our Taiwan Indigenous project. For example, we have this documentary about Ami's hip hop on the last day of this term. That's what I'm really looking forward to. Also, on the last week of term, we're going to have an event looking at analysis of Taiwanese music. And I'm hoping to get a couple of former SOE students to talk about their research on Taiwanese music. So that should be quite exciting. Because it seems to be a topic that we don't have a course on Taiwanese music. But when we run events on this theme, they tend to be very, very popular. I think a lot of people, I think it's not quite as powerful as K-pop for Korean selves. But we meet a lot of students who first pay attention to Taiwan through music. And lastly, I've got to mention the summer school. Because I would say that nowadays, the event that I most enjoy in the academic calendar is the summer school. Because we can get some very special speakers. So for example, this year, Sankersa will be speaking about his new documentary about Taiwanese marriage. And what he did in this film called Love Talk is to follow, I think, eight or nine couples over seven or eight years. And look at how the relationship develops from their very, very extravagant wedding ceremony. The wedding photographs to a kind of challenging relationship. But I think the other thing that I plan to do is go back to our common theme about Taiwanese social movements. So I'm going to get a couple of scholars to talk about this topic. But I'm also going to get the editor of the online magazine, New Blue Magazine. Who's produced an amazing platform for the study of Taiwan politics and social movements. So I'll get him to talk about his research. But also about the practicalities of running an online platform. Which I think is also quite important for us to link Taiwan studies to these kind of practical things. For example, in the past we invited Michael Cole, who edits Taiwan Sentinel to talk about what it's like being a journalist in Taiwan. So I think those kind of things are quite special. Maybe one more thing I would like to add is, I know in the past we talked about a question of how can so our students get more involved. And then I would say that some students who have an interesting title want to really spoil it for choice. Because you have something like 65 to 75 events. And the events are very very diverse. So there's always going to be something, regardless of what department you're in. So I come along to events. And these kind of events are really designed to supplement our teaching courses. So there will be things on international relations and diplomacy that you focus on. So for example, next week we have a major opposition politician coming to talk about his vision for resolving the China-Taiwan stalemate. And I think this is one thing I really enjoy, kind of getting practitioners, either maybe cultural practitioners or political practitioners. So for example, sometimes when we do student surveys and ask, what did you most enjoy? Often they will say, it's meeting former foreign ministers. Like you're going to go meet a foreign minister tomorrow? Yes. Or meeting foreign prime ministers. We've had three Taiwanese former prime ministers, foreign ministers of defence, foreign affairs come to saw us. And last year you had the ambassador to the UK come and talk about aerospace. That's right, yes. And of course we've also had the former UK representative to Taiwan. And he's come to saw us a number of times. I think he's been on that panel as well. Students can also become our volunteers. Often for our larger events, we really need a little bit of help. Just get in touch with Max and just let him know. So for example, last year our biggest event was Longin Tai's talk. And we had a team of something like, I would say 12 volunteers. And that helped to make that event run smoothly. Much more smoothly than the first time she came, which was complete chaos. So I think that would be a good way to get to know how the centre works. And Max, who's currently our project officer, is an example. He started getting involved as a volunteer and now he actually works for us. And I think the event's also quite good places to network. So you can network with speakers. But I think also with other members of the audience who often journalists or diplomats. So I think being known I think is quite important when we're looking to develop our postgraduate careers. And I think that is definitely an important element to being a solar student. Joining these kind of events. Not being afraid to speak, to raise questions, to talk to speakers. And then it's quite possible that within your years as a solar student you can actually share a platform with some of these speakers. So I remember it was the year before you took my class. One of the students on our undergraduate Taiwan politics class, he knew nothing about Taiwan before. Then he started becoming interested in term one. And that year we had a presidential election. So I think I told you the story before. But he asked could we support him going to Taiwan to watch the election? And we managed to get a little bit of funds to help him go to Taiwan. And he did real field work. An undergraduate not speaking Chinese. And then when he came back he wrote a fantastic paper, a term paper on the election. That's really exciting. And then we had a post-election public seminar. And he joined the seminar as a speaker. So we had myself, a senior academic, and then a finally undergraduate. And then like quite a lot of our graduates he ended up going to Taiwan to work after he graduated. Which is quite a, I mean that's one of the reasons why we often have pretty big alumni get-togethers in Taiwan. Yes. Oh really? Yes. And whenever I'm going to give a talk in Taiwan, I'm also wondering who's going to turn up. Which of my four students is going to turn up? And I always get some nice surprises. So I do make sure I kind of give people a bit of warning. Yes. Okay wonderful. Well thank you so much for answering my questions. It was a pleasure.