Gessat, Mark, Dipl. Reg-Wiss

Mark Gessat, Diploma in Area Studies – East Asia, born in Tuebingen, studied Social Studies and East Asian Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, focusing on China. He earned his degree in September 2008 from the University of Duisburg-Essen. His Diploma Thesis focused on Emission Reduction Projects in China as Incentive for Foreign Direct Investment. From September 2005 to August 2006, Mr. Gessat stayed at National Taiwan University with a scholarship granted by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), funded by the Ministry of Education. Besides his academic achievements, Mr. Gessat has also been trained as a professional photographer.

Mark is working on a Ph. D. project on „The vegetarian movement in Post-Authoritarian Taiwan“ (Working Title). As the movement in Taiwan, in line with the international one is making effective use of recent scientific evidence that meat consumption is the leading cause of global warming it enters and challenges the environmental movement. Apart from analyzing the outcome of this new overlapping of the two movements in terms of shared beliefs, public opinion and governance outcome Mark is eager to explore to what extend vegetarian movement organizations underwent a transformation through this change of direction. The aggressive way and aim for political change of contemporary vegetarian advocacy contrasts vastly to the fairly passive and non-single-issue manner in which (mostly) Buddhist organizations have been presenting it for decades. Current phenomena shall thus be analyzed against the backdrop of the history of the vegetarian movement in Taiwan.