Conference team

Yin Chuang has a PhD in Sociology from Lancaster University, UK and is Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. Her research interests include Nationalism and National Identities, Democratization, Everyday Practices and Popular Culture. She held the position as a singer/songwriter, a radio presenter, and a creative consultant in music, design and television advertising for the former Taiwanese President. Dr. Chuang's publications include the book A-Bian’s Extravaganza (阿扁的異想世界) and the music album A Place Called Home (我住的地方), as well as various academic papers and short novels.

Ann Heylen is Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), Taipei. She holds a PhD in Chinese Studies (Sinology) from the Catholic University of Leuven. Her areas of expertise include 17th Century Dutch Formosa, the Japanese Colonial Period and Postcolonial Historiography. She serves as director of the International Taiwan Studies Center at NTNU; holds research affiliations with the Taiwan Research Unit at Ruhr University Bochum and the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen and was Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Pacific Asia Studies at Stockholm University. She is also a founding board member of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS). Her most recent academic books include Becoming Taiwan: From Colonialism to Democracy, edited with Scott Sommers and published by Studia Formosiana, Harrassowitz in 2010 and Japanese Models, Chinese Culture and the Dilemma of Taiwanese Language Reform, published by Harassowitz in 2012. Dr. Heylen is currently working on the transliteration and annotated translation of 17th century Dutch manuscripts pertaining to Formosa (Taiwan).

Edward Vickers is Professor of Comparative Education at Kyushu University Japan, where he also directs the university’s interdisciplinary Taiwan Studies Program (co-funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education). He researches the history and politics of education in East Asia, with a particular focus on the mainland PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan. His work also encompasses studies of the politics of heritage and memory, especially as manifested in museums and public memorials. He is co-author, with Zeng Xiaodong, of Education and Society in Post-Mao China (2017), and co-editor (with Paul Morris and Naoko Shimazu) of Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: identity politics, schooling and popular culture (2013), and (with Mark Frost and Daniel Schumacher) of Remembering Asia’s World War Two (2019). With Kate Taylor-Jones and Ann Heylen, is is co-editor of The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.

Kate Taylor Jones is Professor of East Asian Cinema at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has a varied background with a broad expertise in many forms of visual arts. Her first degree was in English Literature at Goldsmith College, University of London and her MA and PhD, both from Exeter University, focused on the theoretical construction of the international film body. She has been the recipient of a variety of grants from a range of funders including the AHRC, the British Academy, Santander, the Great British Sasakawa Foundation and the British Korean Society. She is currently Senior Researcher on the AFRISCREENWORLDS project funded by the ERC. She has presented her work across the globe in a variety of formats and has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, France, Belgium and South Korea and she conducts research around the globe focusing on a variety of topics, including film studies, history, gender and sexuality studies, media studies, visual culture and critical theory. Kate Taylor Jones is also involved in various women’s education and rape and sexual abuse prevention and aid programs. She has a longstanding record of external engagement – working with film festivals, distributors, schools and diverse audiences on the topic of East Asian cinema and culture.

Scott Sommers holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from National Taiwan Normal University. He is Assistant Professor at Ming Chuan University in Taipei, Taiwan where he teaches courses including Critical Thinking in the Internet Age which addresses fake news and conspiracy theory in the era of the Internet. He has published work that includes the role of language and religion in the history of Taiwan.

His current research and interests span a wide range of topics but are best described as the intersectionality of revolutionary philosophy, traditional Western beliefs and contemporary palingenetic myths. He is the only Canadian to be awarded a black belt by the Taiwan Judo Federation and is a big fan of Eclipsa, the Queen of Darkness.

Alessandra Ferrer is a Ph.D. student at Kyushu University, where she studies in the Department of Education under Professor Edward Vickers. Her research primarily focuses on investigating the legacies of imperialism and conceptualizations of national identity in Chinese societies. Her current doctoral project reviews the work of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission while on Taiwan (1949-2017) to explore the trajectory of shifting official notions of statehood and nationalism in the Republic of China on Taiwan. Her previous research includes a comparative study of contemporary language policy in education in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, forthcoming in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies.

Nathalie Mingboupha is a Teaching Associate at the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, where she obtained her MSc and PhD in East Asian Studies. She specializes on Chinese transnational migrations, and more particularly on Western-born diasporic Chinese and their ethnic return migration to their putative homeland, and the ways in which remigrants’ ethno-cultural identity and ethno-national attachments are impacted by their experiences in contemporary Chinese society. She is broadly interested in the study of 'in-between Chineseness’ and in qualitative research methods in social sciences. Her current research projects include the conceptual development of emotional self-repatriation through media consumption, and the genealogical migration of Chinese families across generations, from when the first generation left China to when the later generation 'returned' to the ancestral homeland.