The European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan - A CCK Foundation Overseas Center

On July 20, 2026, Prof. Ho Ming-sho (何明修) of National Taiwan University's Department of Sociology presented his current book project at the Taiwan Colloquium in a talk entitled "Making Reforms in Taiwan: Social Movements, Political Parties, and the Logic of Coalition Building." His presentation examined why Taiwan has achieved major reforms in some policy areas while lagging behind in others. While Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage in 2019 and completed its transition to a nuclear-free homeland in 2025, it continues to retain capital punishment.

To explain this uneven reform record, Prof. Ho compared Taiwan with Japan and South Korea. Unlike the latter two countries, whose social movements have historically been larger and more militant, Taiwan's movements are generally smaller and less institutionalized. Nevertheless, they have often proved remarkably successful.

Rather than emphasizing organizational strength, Prof. Ho argued that reform outcomes depend primarily on strategic choices. He distinguished between a mass defiance strategy, which relies on large-scale confrontation, and coalition building with political parties. While protest can generate political pressure, durable reforms require sustained cooperation between civil society and party actors. Taiwan's uneven reform trajectory, he concluded, reflects variations in coalition dynamics across different policy fields rather than shortcomings of its democratic system.

On July 17, 2026, Professor Ho Ming-Sho 何明修 from National Taiwan University's Department of Sociology gave a public lecture in his capacity as ERCCT Visiting Scholar. His talk was titled "From Streets to Ballots: Civic Society Mobilization in Taiwan's Bluebird Action and Recall Campaigns" and traced a line from the 2014 Sunflower Movement through the 2024 Bluebird Action to the 2025 Great Recall Campaign, exploring how Taiwan's tradition of street-level civic mobilization has evolved and shifted into formal political channels like recall elections.

On Tuesday, June 30, 2026, a delegation from National Chung Cheng University (CCU) in Chiayi, Taiwan, visited the ERCCT, to learn about the center's programs and mode of operation, after taking part in the morning in a workshop on Addiction and Drugs, hosted by the Tübingen University's Institute of Criminology at the China Centrum Tübingen. Accompanied by Prof. Jörg Kinzig, director of the Institutue of Criminology and his colleague, Prof. Rüdiger Wulf, the delegation consisted of Prof. Ma Yueh-Chung from the Department and Graduate Institute of Criminology at CCU, who is an alumnus of Tübingen University and led the delegation, his colleague Prof. Lai Yung-Lien, as well as Prof. Cheng Chin-Chin and Prof. Hung Leng Chia from the Department of Law at CCU.  

On June 22, 2026, Dr. Sarah Liu (University of Edinburgh) presented her research on gender integration and national defense in Taiwan’s military at the Taiwan Colloquium (“In the same uniform but a forever outsider? Women in the Taiwan national defense“). Her study examines how policymakers incorporate gender integration into defense strategies and how these policies shape military culture.
Based on qualitative interviews with legislators and servicewomen from different branches and ranks, Liu argues that militaries do not simply reflect gender inequalities but actively reproduce them. Drawing on the concept of hegemonic masculinity, she challenges the assumption that increasing the number of women in the armed forces necessarily leads to institutional transformation. Instead, women are often incorporated into existing structures in ways that leave underlying gender hierarchies intact.
Her findings reveal several contradictions. While policymakers expressed support for recruiting more women and even discussed female conscription, concrete measures to facilitate greater inclusion often remained limited. Regulations designed to protect women can also have unintended consequences, restricting access to informal networks that are important for career advancement. Interviewees further described persistent pressures to prove themselves in a male-dominated environment.
Liu concluded that gender inequality in Taiwan’s military is maintained less through overt discrimination than through subtle institutional and cultural practices that continue to position women as outsiders. Nevertheless, she emphasized that military organizations are not fixed institutions and that meaningful structural change remains possible.
 

In her capacity as an ERCCT Short-Term Resident Fellow, Rachael Chan 陳淑惠 from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, presented her Ph.D. research project on Taiwan's Indigenous Cultural Diplomacy in the Taiwan Colloquium on Monday, May 11, 2026. Her presentation provided an insightful analysis of the relationship between Indigenous culture, diplomacy, and international recognition in contemporary Taiwan. In her project she combines perspectives from political geography, decolonial studies, and performance politics to examine how culture functions as a diplomatic tool. Particularly compelling was her discussion of diplomacy beyond formal state institutions and the role of Indigenous communities in Taiwan’s efforts to strengthen its international visibility.

Dr. Chang Ti-han, Vice-Director of the Center of Taiwan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, presented “Reorientating Taiwan: Ocean, Selfhood, and the Pacific”, an interdisciplinary volume that she co-edited with Prof. Niki Alsford (Northern Institute of Taiwan Studies, University of Lancashire), in a book launch talk titled “A deep dive into Taiwan’s oceanic narrative” on Monday, May 11, 2026.

The idea of the book is to challenge several widespread images that continue to shape global perceptions of Taiwan, like its traditional Fujianese-like local culture or its position as a geopolitical flashpoint at the south-eastern rim of continental East Asia. Instead, she emphasized that Taiwan’s history has been shaped by colonialism, migration, and maritime exchange. Referring to historian and former Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng, Dr. Chang introduced the concept of “reorientating Taiwan,” which shifts attention away from continental narratives and towards Taiwan’s oceanic connections and island identity. 
Building upon this framework, the aim of the book is to explore ways in which Taiwan can be reimagined by new generations of Taiwan scholars through oceanic and Pacific perspectives. To approach this question, the project adopts an interdisciplinary methodology combining literature, anthropology, ecology, media studies, and visual culture. Through literary analysis, cultural studies approaches, and historical perspectives, the contributors examine how the ocean has shaped Taiwanese identity, Indigenous cultures, and Taiwan’s relationship with the wider Pacific region. 
The results of the project are reflected in the structure of the book itself. The chapters explore themes such as new oceanic thinking, oceanic writing and translation, representations of the sea in art and media, and the entanglements between human and non-human worlds. Altogether, the volume presents Taiwan not as a peripheral island overshadowed by China, but as an important center of Austronesian culture and a dynamic part of the Pacific world. 
The ensuing discussion further deepened these themes and brought up questions of gender, the underlying political implications, and the challenges of interdisciplinarity. 
 

The first presentation of the Taiwan Colloquium in the summer semester 2026 was delivered by our Short-Term Resident Fellow NGA Shi Yeu (顏仕宇) from the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. In his talk on Monday, May 4, he presented his current research project under the headline “Visceral Lives in Taiwan’s Probiotic Visions,” examining how contemporary discourse around nutritional health practices shapes distribution and consumption of probiotic cultures in Taiwan and thereby understandings of health, the body, and everyday life in relation to wider social and historical transformations. 
At its core, the project asks …read more.

Presenting his latest research project to ERCCT Fellows on Monday, January 26, 2026, Dr. Chang Chuan-Hsien 張傳賢 from the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica spoke on "Changing Sides and Changing Minds: an Examination of Public Expectations of the Legislative Yuan". In his project, Dr. Chang tries to tackle the question of how voter's partisanship influences voter's expectations of the Legislative Yuan, and hypothesizes a relationship with the state of government as unified or divided, so his presentation was followed by constructively critical questions from the audience. Dr. Chang answered everything with much patience. 

In cooperation with the local chapter (Stuttgart) of the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association, the ERCCT presented the latest hit documentary “A Chip Odyssey” 造山者 - 世紀的賭注 by Hsiao Chu-Chen 蕭菊貞 on Saturday, December 13, 2025, at Kino Atelier. The film draw quite a numerous audience, which was greeted by Dr. Dieu Ian-Tsing 趙彥青, by Eva Tseng from Monte Jade, by Mr. Ding of AOU, and given an introduction to the topic by ERCCT Director Prof. Dr. Gunter Schubert. 

The ERCCT's 19th Taiwan Documentary Film Festival took place on 5–6 December 2025 at Kino Atelier in Tübingen. Over the course of two days, the festival offered German and international audiences an in-depth cinematic exploration of Taiwan’s environmental challenges, grassroots activism, and human–nature relationships. This year’s edition featured Huang Shu-Mei (黃淑梅) as guest director, one of Taiwan’s most important independent documentary filmmakers working on environmental and social issues.

The festival was honored by the presence of Ms. Wang Ching-Chi, First Secretary of the Taipei Representative Office in Munich, as well as the Press Officer of the Taipei Representative Office in Munich, who attended the event in person. During the opening ceremony, Ms. Wang delivered welcoming remarks on behalf of the Taipei Representative Office, expressing appreciation for the long-standing cultural and academic cooperation with the ERCCT and highlighting the importance of documentary film as a means of fostering mutual understanding between Taiwan and Europe. The ERCCT gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Taipei Representative Office in the Federal Republic of Germany, Munich Branch Office, which made the festival possible.

Huang Shu-Mei’s work is characterized by long-term engagement, close collaboration with local communities, and a strong ethical commitment to documenting voices that are often marginalized in dominant political and economic narratives. The festival program reflected this focus, bringing together films that address environmental degradation, indigenous ecological knowledge, civic resistance, and the social consequences of Taiwan’s energy transition.

Opening and First Festival Day

The festival officially opened on … continue reading