Written by Aleksandrs Gross.
This article is based on an interview with Ming-yeh Rawnsley.
Image credit: provided by the interviewee.
Guided by Passion
It was not an elaborate career plan or a careful consideration of what would earn the most that guided Ming-yeh Rawnsley’s career development. Rather, it was a pursuit of her interests. This pursuit led her to break conventional academic paths and combine different specialisations creatively.
During her university years in Taiwan, guided by her interests, Ming-yeh switched from the sciences to the humanities. If before university she aspired to specialise in medicine, after university, thanks to her extracurricular activity, she worked in TV scripting, and as a full-time journalist reporting on foreign affairs and the military.
TV scripting resonated most with Ming-yeh. It took a breakdown in her scripting job to push her to pursue a plan she long had in the back of her mind – studying abroad. If she went abroad to become a better TV script writer, then she ended up staying because of a newfound interest in research. What began with a one-year MA in Communication Studies at the University of Leeds led to a PhD and eventual positions at Nottingham University and SOAS.
Today, Ming-yeh is one of the foremost authorities on Taiwanese language cinema (台語片), the founder of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (IJTS), and the former Secretary-General of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS).
Research themes
The experiences Ming-yeh went through in her early 20s, put together with certain identity issues that came up when moving abroad, made her interested in the themes of identity and democratisation, which were to make up a core theme of her research career:
My research interests have been deeply concerned with media, democratisation, and identity. I believe this focus is closely connected to my personal journey. When I was at university in the 1980s, Taiwan was undergoing a process of democratisation. I think, for many people, one’s twenties are a formative stage in life, crucial in shaping who they become.
I have found that almost everything I research is approached through the lens of democratisation—whether as a point of comparison, a way of examining how things have changed or remained the same, or as a means of understanding the influence of democratisation on the present.
With regard to identity, the search often extends beyond the personal to encompass questions of Taiwanese identity, Taiwan itself, and my own position in relation to the wider world. I came to realise that identity is fundamentally relational. During the 26 years I lived in Taiwan, identity was never an issue; one simply did not question who one was. It was only after going abroad that such questions emerged.
In 1991, when I first arrived in the UK, I met my first person from Mainland China. That encounter prompted me to ask: What is our relationship? Who am I in relation to him? At that moment, my understanding of “the Chinese” became deeply unsettled, as meeting an actual person from China rendered previously held assumptions increasingly problematic.
She goes on to explain how, in response to political pressure, she began to explore these interests in the context of cinema instead of media:
Prior to 2005, my research primarily focused on Taiwan’s media—particularly public television—as well as democratisation and identity. However, when I went to work at the UNNC, conducting such research in China proved difficult. Materials were hard to access, and for reasons of self-protection, I became increasingly uneasy about pursuing these topics.
Under martial law in Taiwan before 1987, lived experience gave me a sense of where the “wall” was—the boundary between what was permitted and what was censored. Although that boundary was fluid and negotiable, it was familiar. In China, by contrast, I know a wall exists, but I have no experiential knowledge of where it lies. Without knowing what is safe or unsafe, I feel disoriented. I therefore began to question whether I could continue researching this subject area. If one writes, one wants to write truthfully. I decided instead to turn to cinema [studies]. Although I was not trained in film studies, I had long been interested in cinema and—perhaps naively at the time—believed it would be a safer field of inquiry.
When Ming-yeh turned to cinema studies, she found that she enjoyed it much more than media studies. She quickly found her niche – Taiwanese language cinema – and was astonished by how vast and unexplored the topic was. An unwilling shift that was initially prompted by personal security concerns revealed an interest that would define her career focus and lead to many articles, books and courses all about Taiwanese cinema.
Establishing the International Journal of Taiwan Studies
A major milestone in Ming-yeh’s career, as well as a milestone for the field of Taiwan Studies more generally, was the establishment of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. In 2015, she saw how much momentum the field of Taiwan Studies had gained. There were Taiwan Studies conferences all around the world, in Australia, the United States, Japan, and Europe. Most notably, it wasn’t the same set of people attending each conference; rather, all these different regions had developed their own set of Taiwan scholars. The World Congress of Taiwan Studies in London was also very well received, with 500 attendees.
Put together, these were clear indications that the field of Taiwan Studies was ripe for its own international journal. Ming-yeh didn’t want the journal to be ‘her project’ but to involve the passion of others and create a sense of collective ownership. An experienced editor who believed in the project guided her in writing the journal proposal. Afterwards, an international academic publisher, Brill, accepted the journal proposal with enthusiasm. Professor Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao helped secure funding from Academia Sinica and MOFA; EATS willingly contributed as well.
Since its establishment, the journal has played a crucial role in consolidating Taiwan Studies as an international field. It has provided scholars with a clear sense of the field’s intellectual landscape, including its most widely researched topics, the overall quality of scholarship, and areas where further research is needed. As Ming-yeh notes, in order to enhance the quality and rigour of research in Taiwan Studies, the journal has adopted a double-blind peer-review process for all submissions. As a result, editorial standards have become increasingly stringent, and the rejection rate has risen accordingly—underscoring the journal’s growing stature and commitment to academic excellence.
Regarding the research that is best represented in the journal, the multitude of topics relating to cross-strait and international relations (including from the perspectives of the China-Taiwan-US triangle, security studies, and cybersecurity and AI, etc.) are the most frequently submitted and published.
The second most popular topic is indigenous studies. Many of the articles adopt approaches that move beyond the anthropological paradigm that has traditionally characterised Indigenous studies. Instead, they draw on perspectives from fields such as environmentalism, globalisation, and media studies. This growing body of research on Indigenous issues outside Taiwan is particularly notable, given the increasing scholarly and public attention these topics are receiving in broader transnational and interdisciplinary contexts.
The third most popular topic is film studies and literature in Taiwan.
Another bright sign for the journal is how the audiences that read and publish in IJTS have become increasingly diversified. In particular, the year 2025 has been a milestone for IJTS. It saw record readership in Taiwan, now surpassing that of the UK and the US for the first time. The journal also received a record number of submissions, signalling recovery from the post-pandemic dip and reflecting a widening disciplinary and geographic reach. Submissions from a variety of regions have contributed to a more diverse scholarly community.
Advice
When it comes to advice for people starting out in the field of Taiwan Studies, Ming-yeh emphasises the importance of creating a network of contacts with other Taiwan Studies scholars. Joining regional conferences, such as EATS, NATSA, ATSA, or JATS, is a great way of doing this.
She emphasises that acquiring regional experience through extended residence in Taiwan is of critical importance. While acknowledging the rigour of much scholarship in Taiwan Studies, she observes that some research nevertheless remains disconnected from the lived experiences of Taiwanese society. Such immersion, she suggests, is essential for ensuring that academic analysis is grounded in social reality rather than abstracted from it.
Judging by Ming-yeh’s own career development, it is important not to get too attached to any one career plan, but to keep following one’s interests wherever they lead, and, to the degree that it is possible, to try out as many different interests as possible. Experiences have a unique way of stacking and creating opportunities which otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
Aleksandrs Gross is a freelance journalist focusing on the grassroots development of Taiwanese identity. He is particularly interested in the development of Taiwanese civic society, especially social movements, and how younger generations of Taiwanese respond to the unique political, identity-related and economic challenges of Taiwan. Find more of his writing on New Bloom and his Substack Identity Island.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Taiwan Studies Interviews: What can we learn?’.
Taiwan Insight 