The 8th Taiwan Studies Summer School was held at SOAS, University of London in June, 2014. SOAS Taiwan Studies Summer School events are free to attend and very popular with students of East Asian Studies in the UK. Around seventy students attended and they were keen to interact with the speakers and learn from their insights.

Professor Dafydd Fell, Director of the Centre of Taiwan Studies gave an introduction and contributions were also made by other key members of the SOAS academic and library staff.

Professor Lin Man-Houng from Academia Sinica was one of the key speakers. Professor Lin was also a featured participant in the Taiwan Lectures on Chinese Studies series which has been held annually for the past three years. This series is a cooperative undertaking of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies and the Center of Chinese Studies at the National Library in Taiwan.

Professor Lin discussed two interesting topics on on June 19, 2014 as part of the SOAS Taiwan Studies Summer School. The first presentation was on The May 26, 1971 Note: A Basis for Taiwan’s Sovereignty Claim over the Diaoyutai Islets. The second was on Taiwan, Manchukuo and the Sino-Japanese War. These were followed up with a stimulating fifty-minute Q&A session.

The afternoon programme finished with a very practically oriented presentation given by Ms Yu Hsiao-Ming, Director of the Special Collection Division at the National Central Library in Taiwan. Ms Yu introduced some of the many resources for Chinese Studies available in Taiwan for scholars to access.

The Education Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK assisted in arranging and promoting the seminar. It enjoys a long-standing mutually-beneficial relationship with the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS.