Written by Hsiao-Man Cavalli and Lily Y.H. Lin. This article explores how emotions shape the study of Taiwan’s party politics, examining how researchers’ embodied experiences can deepen understanding of political differences. Through reflections on collaborative research, it highlights how acknowledging emotions fosters more nuanced, inclusive, and relational approaches to conducting and interpreting Taiwan Studies.
Written by Po-Han Lee, Alvaro Martinez-Lacabe, and Yu-chin Tseng. This special issue, featuring the co-editors and authors of the recently published edited volume, Feeling Taiwan, explores how emotions shape Taiwan’s politics, history, and everyday life. Drawing on six case studies, it examines how feelings are not separate from knowledge but fundamental to understanding identity, social change, and lived experience, while inviting broader audiences to engage with Taiwan through emotion.
Written by Shih-An Wang. The author explains how Taiwanese legal scholarship has shifted from foreign-centred doctrines to contextual, historically grounded approaches emphasising Taiwan’s layered legal identity. Through Tay-sheng Wang’s influence, legal history reveals law as dynamic and contingent. This perspective informs constitutional studies, highlighting democracy’s fragility, authoritarian legacies, and Taiwan’s evolving legal system as an ongoing, multi-layered narrative.
Written by Yu-Han Huang. Reflecting on formative undergraduate experiences, the author traces how studying Japanese colonial Taiwan and reading Leo Ching’s Becoming “Japanese” shaped his academic path. Ching’s analysis of colonial identity formation, despite criticisms, offered a framework to understand Taiwan’s complex identity and revealed how colonial legacies continue to influence Taiwanese self-consciousness.
Written by Aleksandrs Gross. This final piece of the special issue reflects on the challenges and approaches to studying Taiwan for the scholars interviewed. Despite the lack of institutionalised academic pathways and fragmented funding compared to other regional studies, there are approaches that, while not guaranteeing academic success, do significantly increase one’s chances of making a passion for Taiwan academically viable.
Written by Aleksandrs Gross and Gunter Schubert. Gunter Schubert believes that maintaining some distance from the object of inquiry is sensible for analytical clarity and intellectual independence. The field of Taiwan studies cannot be a discipline in and of itself; it must span disciplines. Reflecting on his own academic journey, he believes that an academic career cannot be planned and that each step is valuable.
