“Public Scholarship” / “Writing Taiwan for a General Audience”

Sam Robbins, Brian Hioe, and Emily Y. Wu

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-depth analysis, attention to detail, and room for nuance doesn’t have to be the preserve of academic essays or journal articles. However, bringing such content to broader audiences does require a familiarity with a different genre with different conventions that many students and academics might have less experience with. Considerations about readers’ existing knowledge and their interest in a given topic often require additional thought when writing outside of an academic context, and typically less can be taken for granted. This said, public scholarship can not only be a venue to connect to a broader audience. As a medium, it can provide a space for reflection, commentary, predictions, and narrativity often not found in academic writing. In short, "public scholarship" does not mean simplifying ideas. Rather, it means translating them.

In this discussion panel, the speakers discuss their process of writing and working on content for a general audience and give practical advice and tips for how to do so. We hope to help students and academics alike consider how to bring their work to a broader audience and reflect on what it means to write both for those outside of academia and with perhaps little prior knowledge about Taiwan.

Speakers' Bios

Sam Robbins is a master’s student in Sociology at National Taiwan University , where he writes about g0v, digital politics, and data activism. He is also an editor of Taiwan Insight , where he also occasionally writes and translates.

Brian Hioe was one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, and occasional translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, 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. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

Emily Y. Wu , Co-Founder, Ghost Island Media

WU is a content developer and producer. In 2019 she launched Ghost Island Media, a podcast network that creates and curates unique and breakout voices in English and Mandarin to the global audience. Shows from the network have won “Best Show Host” at the inaugural KKBOX Podcast Awards in Taiwan in 2021; been a finalist for Best News Podcast at the Excellent Journalism Award for “The Taiwan Take”; and been recognized as a circular economy solution by SITRA Fund of Finland. In May, the network launched Taiwan’s first audio documentary podcast, “Dos Salidas.” Emily has worked in Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai and graduated from Wellesley College in the U.S.

Organiser: Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: jl91@soas.ac.uk