David on Formosa

After a very long summer vacation it was back to school again this week. I am now starting the second year of the Master’s in Taiwan Studies. If all goes to plan then I will finish the course within a year.
I am taking two classes this semester, State and Society in Taiwan and the Ethnic [...]

Fili has written a post exploring the rankings of NCKU (國立成功大學). I want to take a similar look at the rankings for National Chengchi University (國立政治大學). NCCU doesn’t make it on some of the lists that Fili has referenced. National Taiwan University (國立臺灣大學) is the only Taiwanese university on the 2007 Times Higher Education list [...]

Last night I gave a presentation on "CO2 emissions and economic growth in Taiwan" in my Economic Development of Taiwan class at NCCU. The purpose of the presentation was to introduce our final paper. My presentation can be read in full in this pdf file: CO2 emissions and economic growth in Taiwan. In the paper [...]

I attended the 2008 World Summit of Indigenous Cultures (全球原住民文化會議) in Taipei over the weekend. The conference included speeches, musical performances and an open space forum. Indigenous people from The Philippines, Canada and the USA attended as well as many indigenous people from Taiwan and academics and researchers. 

On Saturday night there was a welcome banquet [...]

This month's breakfast meeting held on Saturday morning in Taipei featured two speakers from Australia, Dr Lily Wang and Professor Bruce Jacobs. Our usual chronicler of these events, Michael Turton, was absent so Jerome asked me to write a brief report.
Dr Lily Wang was born in Taiwan, went to high school in New Zealand and [...]

On Saturday I went on my second trip to Smangus. The weather was perfect and it was a great day to travel in the mountains. This time I travelled with my NCCU classmate Sandy and her husband. Sandy has worked as a primary school in some of the villages in this area. We stopped at [...]

Today I joined Linda Arrigo on a walk around the hills behind Taipei Medical University (臺北醫學大學). The area is covered in graves which reveal many layers of the history of Taiwan in the post World War II period. Most of the graves are of people who arrived in Taiwan with the KMT after 1945 and [...]

The new semester at NCCU started two weeks ago now. I am taking four subjects this semester. They are Economic Development of Taiwan, Social Development of Taiwan, Research Methods and Case Study. 
The content of the first two subjects is fairly self-explanatory. In Social Development we are planning a group project on the topic of racism [...]