Writing books about Green Parties: Taiwan, Canada, Germany and Japan

Arne Jungjohann, James Marshall, Keli Yen, Dafydd Fell, Rikiya Adachi and Cara Camcastle

As part of the 2021 SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School, we kindly ask that you register to attend .

This event will be held online through Microsoft Teams. Here is the LINK .

*Please be aware that all Summer School event times follow British Summer Time (BST)

Abstract

In this roundtable we have invited authors who have written books on Green Parties to discuss their experiences. Our panel will include writers that come from academic, party activists and policy backgrounds and whose research covers Green Parties in Asia, the Americas and Europe. Topics that we will cover in the discussion include: How and why we started researching Green Parties, the research methods we use, what kind of readerships are we writing for, what challenges have we faced, our experiences with publishers and how do we promote our work to wider audiences. The discussion will be chaired by Keli Yen, the former Coordinator of the Global Greens and the Convenor of the Asia-Pacific Greens Federation.

Speakers' Bios

Arne Jungjohann is a political scientist and senior analyst. His fields of expertise are climate, democracy, and coalition governments. As a crossover between science and politics he advises foundations, think tanks, industry and civil society on their strategic program planning.

Arne is a member of the Green Academy of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a network with leading thinkers from science, politics and civil society. Previously, he worked for Minister President Winfried Kretschmann in the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg, at the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation in Washington DC, in the Berlin Bundestag office of MP Reinhard Loske, and in his family-owned company. Arne studied political science at the Philipps University of Marburg and the Free University of Berlin and is based in Stuttgart, Germany.

James Marshall ’s history with the Green Party of Canada runs deep. His father is one of the founders of the federal party, and his godparents were its first candidate and second leader. As a baby, James accompanied his father on his campaign when he ran with the nascent Greens. Decades later, James himself ran as a candidate in the 2017 British Columbia provincial election.  Born and raised in the Metro Vancouver suburbs, James now lives in the city of Vancouver with his partner. For the past decade, he has worked in the city’s video game industry as a Technical Artist.

Dafydd J. Fell is the Reader in Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also the Director of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies. In 2004 he helped establish the European Association of Taiwan Studies. He has published numerous articles on political parties and electioneering in Taiwan. His first book was Party Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2005), which analyzed party change in the first fifteen years of multi-party competition. His second book was Government and Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2011) and the second edition was published in early 2018. He has edited a number of volumes on Taiwan, with the most recent Taiwan Studies Revisited, published in 2019. His latest single authored book is Taiwan’s Green Parties (Routledge 2021) He is also the book series editor for the Routledge Research on Taiwan Series.

Rikiya (a.k.a. Ricky) Adachi is currently the councillor of APGF representing Greens Japan. He’s been involved in Green political movement in Japan since 2003, running for the Upper house in 2004 as one of the 10 Green candidates - but in vain. After that, he extended his Green movement internationally visiting Mongolia, South Korea, Taiwan, France, Australia, Germany, The United States, New Zealand, Canada and The United Kingdom for Green purpose. Meanwhile, he published a book titled “Green Thoughts - to build a richer society without economic growth” in 2013 right before the national elections in Japan to support Greens Japan’s electoral campaign from theoretical perspective. Personally, He is the founding president of a social association called the Institute for Social Science Studies on Costa Rica, and is famous for his investigation and introduction on Costa Rica as “Disarmed Country” and “Renewable Energy Country” by his books which have been sold and read widely for decades. At the same time he is giving lectures in some universities on peace studies, international relations and Latin American philosophy.

Keli Yen entered Green politics because of the Global Greens - which is the global community of all Greens parties and people.  She loves that Green ideology is based on a understanding that we live together on a precious earth and thus our wellbeing is interdependent.The people of the Global Greens inspired her to get actively involved in Green politics.  They showed her that everyone is a leader, and that politics is simply a process of becoming increasingly aware of that leadership. Over 13 years Keli has worked to develop the international dimension of Green politics by serving in leadership roles in the Green Parties of Taiwan, New Zealand and Sweden.  Internationally, Keli served as Convenor for both the Asia Pacific Greens Federation (APGF) and for the Global Greens organisation.  Keli currently represents the Greens in the municipal board for elderly care in Gävle, Sweden, in the board of the Hamlin Fistula hospital in Ethiopia and serves as Advisor to the Global Greens.  She works to implement the Sustainable Development Goals in cities and in businesses.

Cara Camcastle is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University who specializes in Canadian political parties and environmental policy.    After completing the doctoral degree in political science at Queen's University in Kingston Ontario, she spent a year in Berkeley California on a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by SSHRC.  She was intrigued about the growing support for the Green Party in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island and conducted the first ever academic study of its membership. Two papers were published from the results of this study: "The Green Party of Canada in Political Space and the New Middle Class Thesis"  (Environmental Politics, vol. 16, no.4, August 2007, 17 pages) and "Survey Says Green Party members overwhelmingly accept limits-to-growth and believe nature has an intrinsic value" Alternatives journal (issue on the Greening of Politics, vol.33, no.1, 2007).   The manuscript for a book Canadian Greens: Breaking the Green Barrier is now under preparation (advance contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press) that will explain the transformation of the Green Party of Canada from a minor party to a major party despite important barriers, such as the first-past-the-post electoral system.

Organiser: Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: jl91@soas.ac.uk