Non-Resident Fellows

J Michael Cole

jmichaelcoleintaipei@gmail.com

J. Michael Cole is a senior non-resident fellow with the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, UK, and associate researcher with the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China. Cole holds an MA in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada and was an intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in Ottawa from 2003-05.

Since his relocation to Taiwan in 2005, he has worked as a deputy news editor at the Taipei Times (2006-13), chief editor of the Thinking Taiwan Foundation's Thinking Taiwan, and is currently chief editor of Taiwan Sentinel. Besides being a regular contributor for CPI Analysis, The National Interest and Jane’s Intelligence Review, his work has appeared in WSJ, China Brief, South China Morning Post, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, the Ottawa Citizen and several other publications.

His latest book, Convergence or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait, was published by Routledge in 2016. Cole specialises on cross-Strait relations, regional security, security intelligence and Chinese political warfare

Expertise

China-U.S.-Taiwan relations; Taiwan Straits military issues; People's Liberation Army; Civil Society-building in Taiwan; U.S. arms sales to Taiwan; Espionage; East China Sea; South China Sea; Asymmetrical Warfare; Counter-Proliferation; Terrorism.

You can find J Michael Cole's podcasts and video's below and more on our fellows projects.

J Michael Cole discusses his recently published book

Cross-Strait Relations Since 2016: The End of the Illusion (Routledge, February 2020)  

M503: Cross-Strait politics is intervening in people's safety 

The controversy surrounding the M503 air route started in January 2018. On 4 January, China announced the new northbound flights on the M503 route, which lies very close to the middle line of the cross-Strait air border. This is not a new route, as many commentators have already mentioned. The M503 route had initially been discussed in 2015, due to the fact that the then President of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jou and his party the Kuomintang (KMT) were in power and seeking closer trade ties to the China.

Read the blog post.

Listen to Michael Cole being interviewed about M503 air route: 

Brian Hioe

bch2131@columbia.edu

Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom, an online magazine covering activism and youth politics that was founded in Taiwan in 2014 in the wake of the Sunflower Movement. He is a freelance journalist and translator, focusing on politics, social movements, arts, and culture. He has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. 
Hioe’s writing has been published in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Dissent Magazine, The Diplomat, Art Forum, Disegno, The Mekong Review, Popula, and other publications. Television and radio appearances by Hioe have included on Al-Jazeera, the BBC World Service, Channel NewsAsia, Democracy Now, Intelligence Squared, The Spectator, and other programs.

Ian Inkster

ii1@soas.ac.uk

Inkster is a global historian and political economist focusing especially upon East Asia, Europe and Australasia, with specific archival interest in UK, India, Australia, Taiwan, Japan. He has held Chairs in history, economic history and social sciences in Australia, UK, and Taiwan.

Books include Science and Technology in History (London 1991); The Japanese Industrial Economy. Late Development and Cultural Causation, London, 2001; Japanese Industrialisation. Historical and Cultural Perspectives, London, 2001; with Satofuka, Culture and Technology in Modern Japan London, 2000; Technology and Industrialisation: Historical Case Studies and International Perspectives, London, 1998; Scientific Culture and Urbanisation in Industrialising Britain, London, 1997. Most recent book with James, Religious Dissent and the Aikin-Barbauld circle 1740-1860, Cambridge, 2012. His most recent major article entitled,‘Economy, Technology and the Huttonian Enlightenment: Approaches to China in the International Political Economy since the Early Twentieth Century’, International History Review, XXXVII, 4, (2015), 809-840. Editor of History of Technology, London, since 2000.

Expertise

Global history and international political economy, with especial interests in China, Japan and Taiwan; FRHS elected 1983; editor History of Technology since 2001 (London, Bloomsbury); archival work in Japan, UK, Taiwan, India and Australasia on linkages between knowledge, technology and industrialisation using both comparative techniques and global modelling. Particular Taiwan interests – history of indigenous peoples, the cannibal claims, Taiwan-Chinese relations to present-time, foreign influences in Taiwan history.

Don S. Lee

don.lee@g.skku.edu

Don S. Lee is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Governance and the Department of Public Administration at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. Formerly, he held a lecturer level position in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego and an M.A. in public policy at Georgetown University.

His research focusing on party system institutionalization in Taiwan in comparison with 20 other Asian democracies was funded by the Leverhulme Trust for three years (2018-21). His other research on cabinet formation and management in Taiwan and other Asian countries has been published or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals, such as Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Oxford Handbook, Party Politics, Regulation & Governance, and among others.

Expertise

Political economy and institutions; party politics and electoral systems; representation; comparative democratization and regime type; comparative presidential studies; Taiwan and East Asia

Mark Wenyi Lai

markjrlai@hotmail.com

Mark Wenyi Lai is an Associate Professor, a non-resident fellow of the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham in UK, Chairperson of the Department of International Affairs, Graduate Program of International Affairs, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Taiwan. He has a PhD in Political Science from State University of New York, Albany, a MA in Political Economy from New York University, and a BA in Philosophy from National Taiwan University. He has been a visiting researcher at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a visiting professor at University of Santo Tomas, Manila. 

Lai published articles focusing on Cross-Strait relations, American foreign policy and international political economy. In recent years he published “The Boy Who Cried Wolf: North Korea’s Nuclear Tests and Their Implications for Regional Stability,”, “Weak Obama and Tougher Trump?”, “Friend or Foe? Empirical Study on the Global Reaction to US Hegemon,”, “Rethinking the Rogowski Model: Taiwan’s Trade Policy and Domestic Political Alignment 1996-2008,”.

Expertise

Cross-Strait Relations, American Foreign Policy and international political economy

Bonny Ling

b.ling@workbetterinnovations.com

Bonny is Executive Director of Work Better Innovations, a research consultancy with a community service mission working on new ideas for a responsible economy; Research Fellow with the Institute for Human Rights and Business; and Advisory Board Member of the INGO Human Rights at Sea. She wrote her PhD in Law on human trafficking and China, at the Irish Centre of Human Rights of the National University of Ireland, Galway, and is an expert on human trafficking and contemporary slavery. 

Bonny has a professional background in international diplomacy. She has worked with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Mission in Liberia and UNESCO. In 2004, she was part of the UN legal team that worked on the Cyprus peace talks. Bonny was an election observer for the referendum on East Timor’s independence and also for the OSCE in the Republic of Georgia and Albania. 

Bonny is a practitioner-scholar. She taught human rights at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She later served as the Programme Director of the international summer school on business and human rights at the University of Zurich. Bonny also taught at Sciences Po Paris and was a visiting scholar at the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University, where she interviewed Chinese irregular migrants and worked on a research project that set out policy recommendations for inclusive, community policing in England. 

Bonny is a graduate of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and University of Georgia in the US. She is a President Truman Scholar, Gates Cambridge Fellow and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Bonny is based in the UK. She consults on ESG regulatory developments in Asia and is a strong advocate for the responsible recruitment of migrant workers. Her book chapter on the Abolition of Slavery in China has been published in an edited volume on studies in global slavery on Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250–1900 (ed,. Leiden: Brill 2021). 

Expertise 

International human right, migrant rights, labour rights; international development; corporate social responsibility; ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) regulatory developments in Asia; business and human rights; slavery; human trafficking and labour exploitation; and Taiwan in international context. 

You can find Bonny Ling's podcasts and videos below:

October 2021, Institute for Human Rights and Business and Fair Square Webinar: “Fair Recruitment in Review - Philippines to Taiwan: Falling Through the Cracks?,” . 

June 2021, Lecture Commemorating Juneteenth, the Abolition of Slavery in the U.S., University of Portsmouth, UK. Lecture: “The Abolition of Slavery: Past and Present Echoes,” .

Chen-yu Lin

chen-yu.lin@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Chen-Yu Lin is a popular music researcher with a particular interest in interdisciplinary methods including ethnographic filmmaking and mapping. She is Assistant Professor at Department of International Business, National Taiwan University, and Research Fellow in Institute of Popular Music (IPM), Department of Music at the University of Liverpool, as well as a former editor of Taiwan Insight.

Her research focuses on the transnational markets of popular music in the Sinophone world as well as music censorship in Taiwan and China. While often incorporating filmmaking as a research method, the short film she produced and directed, Chasing the China Wind: A Musical Journey, was nominated for Utopian Award in AHRC Research in Film Awards 2016. Another film she produced and co-directed, George Harrison: The Story of the Beatles and Indian Music, was screened in a tribute concert for the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Her most recent publications include article entitled ‘Relocating the Functions of Chineseness in Chinese Popular Music after the China Wind’ in China Perspectives (2020), and book chapter (E. Tsai, T. Ho, and M. Jian. eds) entitled ‘Multidimensionality of Chineseness in Mandopop: Jay Chou’s China Wind Pop and the Transnational Audience’ in Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music (2019). Chen-Yu is also a music journalist writing for various publications, including Q Magazine, Vogue, Initium Media and so on.

Expertise

Mandopop and the transnational markets; Popular music and identities in Taiwan; Music censorship in Taiwan and China; Popular music and cultural policy in Taiwan. 

David O'Brien

david.obrien@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

David O’Brien is a Lecturer in East Asian Politics in the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. His research is based on many years of qualitative fieldwork and seeks to explore how ethnic identity continues to evolve in China and the interplay between state and individual interpretations of identity. He has become increasingly interested in Taiwan, both in exploring representations of Taiwan's ethnic groups and also Cross-Strait tourism.

Previously he worked as a journalist for an Irish national newspaper reporting on a wide range of topics in Ireland as well as Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, South Africa, India and Nepal. He has worked and lived in China for a number of years.

Expertise

Ethnic identity and policy, the Chinese political system as well as social science research methodologies in the Chinese context.

Michael Reilly

michaelreilly012@btinternet.com

Michael Reilly is a former Director of the British Office in Taipei and Chief Representative in China for BAE Systems. He has been affiliated to the CPI as a Senior Fellow since 2015 and in 2016 was a Visiting Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei under the Taiwan Fellowship program, studying EU-Taiwan relations.

Expertise

East Asian security; Taiwan; Chinese business policy. 

You can find Michael Reilly's podcasts and video's below and more on our fellow's projects.

A new beginning or more of the same? The European Union and and East Asia after Brexit

The University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme presents an online book Launch hosted by editors Michael Reilly and Dr Chun-yi Lee who will invite co-authors to join them and present their chapters.

Towards an EU-Taiwan Investment Agreement: Prospects and Pitfalls

In late 2015, against a background of growing populist opposition to international trade agreements, the European Commission announced its willingness to negotiate a comprehensive bilateral investment agreement with Taiwan. While this should be relatively straightforward, this book warns that it is unlikely to be so. The major stumbling block is not Chinese opposition, as is so often assumed, or populist resistance but a lack of sufficient political will on both sides. This stems from a mutual lack of awareness which in turn is due to the relative stagnation of bilateral trade. A successful outcome would therefore act as a catalyst in developing relations further.

The author examines the principal obstacles to reaching an agreement and the ways of overcoming them. The book should be of interest to policy makers, negotiators and advisors involved in the forthcoming negotiations but also to anyone with an interest in the EU's relations with Taiwan.

Read the blog post.

Listen to Michael Reilly being interviewed about his book: 

Gary Rawnsley

gdr1@aber.ac.uk

Gary Rawnsley is Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Department of International Politics, University of Aberystwyth working at the intersection of international politics and communications. Professor Rawnsley has held visiting positions in Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

He is book reviews editor of the Journal of International Communication and serves on the editorial boards of the Asian Journal of Communication, the American Journal of Chinese Studies and Media and Communication. Professor Rawnsley is also a member of the Soft Power Advocacy and Research Centre at Macquarie University and an External Fellow of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham.

Expertise

International communications in Asia, with particular interest in China and Taiwan; propaganda; public diplomacy and soft power; cultural diplomacy; information warfare; globalisation, regionalisation and localisation of information and culture; democratisation and the media; journalism in China and Taiwan; the history and politics of China and Taiwan.

Ming-Yeh Rawnsley

ming-yeh.rawnsley@nottingham.ac.uk

Rawnsley, Ming-yeh T. is Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She is also Secretary-General, European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS, 2012-present). She worked as a researcher at the University of Nottingham (1999-2005) and became Head of Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (2005-2007). Before she joined SOAS, Dr Rawnsley researched and taught East Asian film industries at the University of Leeds (2007-2013).

She has published widely in both English and Chinese on Chinese-language cinema and media and democratisation in Taiwan. She is a founding member of The International Journal of Taiwan Studies, jointly supported by EATS and Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Her most recent publications include (eds with Gary Rawnsley) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (2015) and (eds with Kuei-fen Chiu and Gary Rawnsley) Taiwan Cinema: International Reception and Social Change (2017).

Expertise

Media and Democratisation in Taiwan and China; East Asian Cinema; Taiwan Cinema; Chinese-language Cinema; Trans-disciplinary science communications in Taiwan and in the UK; Literature, Media and Culture of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Shelley Rigger

shrigger@davidson.edu

Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics, Chair of Chinese Studies and Assistant Dean for Educational Policy at Davidson College and a non-resident fellow of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She has been a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University (2005) and a visiting professor at Fudan University (2006) and Shanghai Jiaotong University (2013 and 2015).

Rigger is the author of two books on Taiwan's domestic politics, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). In 2011 she published Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, a book for general readers. Her monograph, "Taiwan's Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and 'Taiwan Nationalism'" was published in November 2006. Currently she is working on a study of Taiwan's contributions to the PRC's economic take-off.

You can find Shelley Rigger's podcasts and video's below and more on our fellow's projects.

The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise

This talk, based on Shelley Rigger’s new book, The Tiger Leading the Dragon, traces the development of the cross-Taiwan Strait economic relationship and explores how Taiwanese firms and individuals helped create the China of today. 

Expertise

Taiwan; Taiwan domestic politics; Cross-strait relations; Democracy in Taiwan; National identity in Taiwan-China relations; Cross-strait economic interations; Taiwan's perceptions of mainland China.

You can find Shelley Rigger's podcasts and video's below and more on our fellow's projects.

Gunter Schubert

Non-Resident Senior Fellow

gunter.schubert@uni-tuebingen.de

Gunter Schubert is Professor of Greater China Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies’ Department of Chinese and Korean Studies, University of Tübingen. He is also the founder and director of the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT) at this university. His research covers local governance and policy implementation in the PRC, reform of China’s private sector and state-business relations, cross-strait political economy and economic integration, and Taiwan domestic politics. His latest publications include Taiwan and the ‘China Impact’: challenges and opportunities (ed., London-New York: Routledge 2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan (ed,. London-New York: Routledge 2016).

Expertise

Local governance and policy implementation in the PRC, reform of China's private sector and state-business relations, cross-strait political economy and economic integration, and Taiwan domestic politics.