By Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley (蔡明燁)
Image credit: Selected issues and award-winning articles from the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. Provided by Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley.
This Taiwan Insight special issue brings together five scholars who were recognised by the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (IJTS) Research Article Competition. Their contributions cover Indigenous justice, vegan advocacy, cross-Strait relations, political communication and music. This breadth is not incidental. It reflects the increasingly diverse questions, disciplines and methods through which Taiwan is studied, as well as the wider relevance of Taiwan-based research to global academic and public debates.
The IJTS was established as a multidisciplinary platform for research on Taiwan. The journal connects scholars across the humanities and social sciences while encouraging dialogue between Taiwan Studies and other fields of enquiry. The IJTS Research Article Competition extends this mission by identifying and supporting original work by emerging scholars. Rather than confining Taiwan to a single disciplinary or geopolitical framework, the competition recognises research that uses Taiwan to reconsider broader questions of identity, culture, politics, society and international relations.
The five essays in this special issue grow out of articles recognised in the 2021 and 2023 competitions. Most contributors revisit their award-winning research, reflecting on its arguments, subsequent developments and their current or future projects. Min-Erh Wang takes a somewhat different route, introducing newer research on the Taiwan School of Music. Together, the essays demonstrate that an academic article is not necessarily the conclusion of a project. It can become a starting point for further research and broader public discussion.
Indigenous Identity and the Exercise of Law
J. Christopher Upton’s “Legal Indigeneities: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Taiwan’s Indigenous Courts”, winner of the Indigenous Studies category in the inaugural 2021 competition, examines Taiwan’s Indigenous court system and how legal institutions interpret Indigenous identity and culture.
The establishment of Indigenous courts may appear to signal institutional recognition of cultural difference. Yet recognition also raises difficult questions: Who is authorised to define Indigenous custom? How is cultural authenticity assessed in legal proceedings? What happens when the state’s demand for stable categories encounters identities and practices that are historically changing, internally diverse and shaped by unequal relations of power?
Upton’s research therefore reaches beyond courtroom procedure. It invites us to consider the opportunities and limitations that arise when Indigenous knowledge and experience enter a state-centred legal framework. His contribution to this special issue returns to these questions and their continuing significance for Indigenous justice in Taiwan.
Veganism, Animal Advocacy and Sustainability
Gina Song Lopez’s “Going Weigen: Animal Advocacy and Sustainability Intersections under Taiwan’s New Vegan Movement” received the Social Sciences award in the 2023 competition. Her research examines the emergence of a new vegan movement in Taiwan and the connections it creates among animal advocacy, environmental sustainability and changing everyday practices.
Taiwan provides a particularly productive setting for such research. Vegetarian food has long been associated with religious and cultural traditions, but contemporary vegan advocacy also draws on global conversations about animal rights, climate change, ethical consumption and sustainable living. The idea of going weigen consequently involves more than a dietary choice. It reflects the circulation and adaptation of new vocabularies, identities and forms of activism.
Song Lopez’s work shows how transnational movements acquire locally specific meanings. Her contribution encourages readers to consider how advocacy develops at the intersection of inherited practices and newer ethical and environmental concerns, and how personal consumption can become connected to broader projects of social change.
Rethinking Cross-Strait Relations
Two merit-award recipients from the inaugural competition approach cross-Strait relations from different but complementary perspectives.
Frédéric Krumbein’s “Explaining Cross-Strait Relations with Regional Integration Theory” asks whether theories developed to explain regional integration can help us understand relations between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Cross-Strait economic interaction has often been accompanied by expectations that trade, investment and social exchange might encourage political convergence. Yet developments across the Taiwan Strait also demonstrate that economic interdependence does not automatically produce political integration.
Krumbein’s analysis therefore contributes to a broader theoretical discussion of the relationship between economics, institutions, identity and political authority. At a time of heightened geopolitical tension, revisiting the assumptions underlying integration theory is especially valuable.
Simona A. Grano’s “‘Letters to Taiwanese Compatriots’: The PRC’s Unification Ideology and Taiwanese Response in Cross-Strait Communication” concentrates on the language and political ideas through which Beijing has addressed Taiwan. By examining successive “letters to Taiwan compatriots” and responses within Taiwan, she highlights communication as a contested political process rather than a one-way transmission of policy.
The meaning and effectiveness of such messages depend not only on their authors’ intentions but also on how their intended audiences receive them. Grano’s work highlights the widening distance between the PRC’s unification narratives and political identities in Taiwan. Read alongside Krumbein’s contribution, it shows why cross-Strait relations cannot be explained solely through material exchange or official policy. Ideas, identities and audience interpretations matter equally.
Music, Political Commitment and Cultural History
Min-Erh Wang’s prize-winning article, “The Commodification of Cold War Ideologies: The Reception of Casals in Japan and the Sinophone World in the Post-Cold War Era”, traced the changing reception of cellist Pablo Casals and the relationship among music, political commitment and Cold War memory. His earlier Taiwan Insight essay on Casals’s reception in Taiwan introduced some of these concerns to a wider readership.
For this special issue, Wang turns to his newer project on the Taiwan School of Music. This shift expands the discussion from the reception of an internationally celebrated musician to the formation and interpretation of Taiwan’s own musical history. It also raises questions about how artistic communities are named, how cultural lineages are constructed and how Taiwan’s music is situated within local, regional and international histories.
Further Award-Winning Research
Vivian Szu-Chin Chih, winner of the Arts and Humanities category in the 2021 competition, is not with us in this lineup this time. Her prize-winning article, “Editing as an Act of Intersemiotic Translation in A City of Sadness: From Poetic Language to Cinematic Language”, nevertheless remains an important part of this body of research, illuminating how cinematic form shapes historical memory.
A further 2023 competition winner, Wen-chi Li, is not contributing to this special issue either because he recently addressed related questions in “Becoming Taiwanist”, published by Taiwan Insight on 9 September 2026. That essay resonates with his award-winning IJTS article, “Why Do We Need Taiwan Studies in the Twenty-First Century?”.
Although Li’s essay is not formally part of the present collection, it serves as a valuable companion for an honourable mention. His reflections draw attention to Taiwan Studies not simply as the study of a geographical object, but as an intellectual practice shaped by language, location, personal experience and scholarly commitment.
The five contributions featured here offer different answers to what Taiwan Studies can do. They move between institutions and identities, texts and audiences, and cultural forms and political structures. They also show how research grounded in Taiwan can speak to wider questions about Indigenous justice, historical memory, social movements, regional integration, political communication and cultural formation.
We hope this special issue introduces these award-winning studies to new readers while opening further conversations beyond the original journal articles. It celebrates the achievements of the contributors, but it also demonstrates something broader: Taiwan Studies is not defined by a single subject, method or political question. Its vitality lies in the connections it creates—across disciplines, between academic and public writing, and between research on Taiwan and debates of global importance.
Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley (蔡明燁) is a Non-Residential Research Fellow at the Taiwan Research Hub of the University of Nottingham. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. Her contact email is mytrawnsley@gmail.com.
This article was published as part of the special issue on IJTS Research Article Competition Winners