Our first club event!
The Future of Taiwan Conference
February 10th, 2016
Posing cutely for the camera, mimicking the Tzuyu flag waving incident
Our very own Co-President and founder moderated for this event. Props to her!
Showing off the campaign uniform for Freddy Lim, who ran in the 2016 legislative elections and won as Legislator belonging to the New Power Party
Tremendous turnout for our conference
Our president having a moment
Mr Stainton cracking a joke in his fantastic and informative speech
Showing off a campaign flag for legislative candidate Freddy Lim and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen
Informative speech on "Taiwan's New Normal"
Mr. David Mulroney
David Mulroney is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St. Michael’s College, after more than 30 years in Canada’s Public Service. As a career Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Mulroney was Canada’s ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 2009 to 2012. Middle Power, Middle Kingdom, his book about Canada-China relations was selected by the Globe and Mail as one of the best books of 2015.
Prior to his appointment to Beijing, Mr. Mulroney was assigned to the Privy Council Office in Ottawa as the Deputy Minister responsible for the Afghanistan Task Force, overseeing coordination of all aspects of Canada's engagement in Afghanistan. He also served as Secretary to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan ("the Manley Panel"). Mr. Mulroney's other assignments included serving as Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and, concurrently, as the Prime Minister's Personal Representative to the G8 Summit. He has also served as the Executive Director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei.
Professor Victor Falkenheim
Victor C. Falkenheim is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto where he has taught since 1972.
Educated at Princeton (B.A) and Columbia (MA & Ph.D),
Professor Falkenheim has previously served twice as Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies as well as Director of the Joint Centre for Modern East Asia.
His research interests and publications center on local politics and political reform in China. He has lectured widely in China and has worked on a number of CIDA and World Bank projects in China over the past two decades. His current research focuses on issues dealing with migration and urbanization.
Professor Ito Peng
Ito Peng is a Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the Department of Sociology, and the School of Public Policy and Governance. She is also the Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy, University of Toronto. She teaches political sociology, specializing in family, gender, and demographic issues, migration and comparative social policy. She has written extensively on family and gender policies, labour market changes, and social and political economy of care in East Asia.
Professor Peng has held a variety of senior leadership positions at the University of Toronto and outside of the university. Prior to being the Director of the Centre for Global Social Policy, Professor Peng was the Associate Dean, Interdisciplinary & International Affairs at the Faculty of Arts and Science. She has also served as the Chair and Director of Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies and the Director of Centre for the Studies of Korea, both at the Asian Institute.
Professor Peng is a senior fellow of Massey College and Trinity College, University of Toronto; and a senior fellow of Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She has been an associate researcher with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) since 1996, and she is an international advisor for International Labor Organization (ILO). Dr. Peng received her PhD from London School of Economics.
Professor Joseph Wong
Joseph Wong is the Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Professor of Political Science, and Canada Research Chair in Health, Democracy and Development. He was the Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School from 2005 to 2014. Wong is the author of many academic articles and several books, including Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics In Taiwan and South Korea and Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State, both published by Cornell University Press. He is the co-editor, with Edward Friedman, of Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose, published by Routledge, and Wong recently co-edited with Dilip Soman and Janice Stein Innovating for the Global South with the University of Toronto Press. Wong’s articles have appeared in journals such as Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, Governance, among many others.
Professor Wong has been a visiting scholar at institutions in the US (Harvard), Taiwan, Korea, and the UK (Oxford); has worked extensively with the World Bank and the UN; and has advised governments on matters of public policy in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe.
Wong’s current research focuses on poverty and innovation. He is also working with Professor Dan Slater (Chicago) on a book about Asia’s development and democracy, currently under contract with Princeton University Press. Professor Wong teaches courses in the department of Political Science, the Munk One program and the Munk School of Global Affairs. Wong was educated at McGill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
CLICK BELOW TO READ
Professor Wong's article on
"Taiwan's New Normal" after observing
the 2016 presidential election.
CLICK BELOW TO VISIT
Mr. Stainton's Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada (THRAC)
加拿大台灣人權協會
Mr. Michael Stainton
MICHAEL STAINTON 史邁克牧師 first went to Taiwan as a language student in 1974. He was a missionary serving the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan from 1980 to 1991 in social and community development ministries with Taiwan Indigenous Peoples. In the 1990’s he did graduate studies in anthropology at York University with a focus on the interaction of religion, politics and ethnicity among Taiwan indigenous peoples.
Michael is a Research Associate of the York Centre for Asian Studies where he is a specialist in Taiwan. He is founder and secretary of the Canadian Mackay Committee (加拿大馬偕委員會), and President of the Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada (加拿大台灣人權協會會長). He has helped organize election observation groups to Taiwan in 1992 and 2012.
He also did field work in Taiwan observing the 1991 National Assembly and 1998 Legislative elections (the latter focusing on local politics in indigenous communities). In 2016 he observed the election as part of the International Election Observer Mission sponsored by the International Committee for a Democratic Taiwan.
Ms. Yi-Chun Chien
Yi-Chun Chien is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at University of Toronto, and was previously a visiting scholar at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies in Academia Sinica, Taiwan in 2015.
Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Rights to Settle: Comparing Migrant Care Worker Policies in Taiwan and South Korea,” investigates the relationship of welfare state, care work and international migration in the context of East Asia. Her broader research interests include gender politics, East Asian social policies and philosophy of emotions.
Yi-Chun received her B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from National Taiwan University. She is currently a doctoral associate of Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care Project at the University of Toronto.
Mr. Kevin Luo
Kevin Wei Luo is currently a 1st year PhD student in Political Science at the University of Toronto, focusing on comparative politics and China.
His main research interests include the study of comparative authoritarian regimes and the political economy of contentious politics.
A native of Tainan, Taiwan, Kevin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and went on to receive a Master of Arts degree from the Regional Studies: East Asia (RSEA) program at Harvard University.
He is now working on the historical and contemporary fiscal capacities of the Chinese state, though he remains strongly interested in the study of Taiwanese politics.
Finally, a word of thanks
to our co-sponsors:
STUDENT
INITIATIVE
FUND
Taipei Economic & Cultural Office, Toronto
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)
