Dr Michael Hoare

Michael Hoare is a research associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS. He became a 'freelance academic' some thirty years ago after early retirement from a career teaching National Science in London University. Having studied Chinese language at the University of Westminster (then PCL) and the Mandarin Centre in Taipei, he took up Chinese socio-political history with a speciality of UK-Taiwan relations. Within this he researched the '228' events, the history of Taiwan Prisoners of War, the Cross-Strait crises, and more recently the Japanese colonial period. He has also lectured at the Academia Sinica, the European Association of Taiwan Studies, as well as SOAS on many occasions. In what has been a parallel career as Historian of Science he has published on the history of Geodesy (The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth, 2005) and on Lexicography (In the Oxford History of English Lexicography, 2000) as well as papers on the relation of Science and Literature. His Intimate Chinese: From Grammar to Fluency was published in Taipei in 2012.

History of UK-Taiwan relations