UCLA graduate students awarded Taiwan Studies Lectureship research fellowships

  The Taiwan Studies Lectureship (TSL) grant has been the cornerstone of UCLA’s Taiwan Studies Program since its inception in 2014. In March 2025, the Taiwan Ministry of Education approved a five-year extension of this grant through 2030. Now in its fourth stage, the TSL has historically supported a variety of projects, but funding for graduate student research has been one of the grant’s most consistent elements throughout the past 12 years. The TSL fellowships provide invaluable assistance to UCLA scholars in the early stages of their academic careers. This past spring quarter, the Asia Pacific Center awarded TSL fellowships to seven graduate students in three UCLA departments. These fellowship recipients will travel to Taiwan for research this summer or during the 2026–27 academic year. Students generally work with a faculty mentor from an institution in Taiwan, thus also enhancing academic exchanges between UCLA and Taiwanese universities. Many of these mentors have previous connections with UCLA as invited speakers for conferences and lectures, or through research collaboration with UCLA faculty. This article profiles four current graduate student fellowship recipients working on literature, language, film, and dance.

Alan Dai, one of this year’s Taiwan Studies Lectureship fellowship recipients,
presents his research at the conference “Tongues of Taiwan:
Culture and Identity between Languages and Empires,” held at UCLA on May 29–30.

Alan Dai just completed his second year in the PhD program of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) studying with Prof. Shu-mei Shih. Together with Prof. Shih and fellow ALC PhD student Quentin Tan,  Alan also recently organized the conference “Tongues of Taiwan: Culture and Identity between Languages and Empires,” held at UCLA on May 29–30. This summer, Alan will conduct archival research on “Colonialism, Bilingualism, and Sinitic Fiction in Taiwanese Periodicals.” Alan is working with Sinitic-language fiction serialized in bilingual periodicals from colonial-era Taiwan, analyzing the ways in which the Taiwanese editors of these publications crafted their literary production and negotiated their political positions within the social and cultural context of the Japanese empire. He plans to work in the collections of the Taipei Public Library, the National Taiwan University Library, and the Institute of Taiwan History (Academica Sinica), as well as the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and the Tainan Public Library. Alan will be mentored by Prof. Huang Mei-E at the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Taiwan University.

Like Alan, Wataru Watanabe is also a member of the 2024 entering PhD cohort in ALC. Wataru works with Prof. Hongyin Tao and specializes in East Asian linguistics, language pedagogy, and discourse in Japanese and Chinese. His summer research is on the topic of “Managing Hesitation in Chinese Tutoring Sessions at National Taiwan University.” Wataru’s project is informed by Conversational Analysis (CA) scholarship, and will investigate the influence of moments of hesitation or difficulty on the process of language learning. This research reframes pauses in conversation not as moments of breakdown, but as opportunities for growth guided by interventions from instructors. Wataru will draw on existing data compiled by his mentor, Prof. Tsai I-Ni (National Taiwan University), who recorded 12 hours of language tutoring sessions for analysis. He will also gather new data by conducting his own fieldwork in Taiwan. He hopes to “suggest ways instructors can recognize hesitation as meaningful learner action and respond in ways that support participation and engagement.”

Yige Wu studies with Prof. Michael Berry in the ALC PhD program. She is conducting research this summer on “Screening Hong Kong Film-in-Exile in Taiwan: Sinophone Intimacies and Knowledge Making.” Her project explores bookstores that relocated from Hong Kong to Taiwan following the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-Extradition Act. In addition to functioning as cultural hubs for Hong Kong exiles in Taiwan, these bookstores have also served as venues for film screenings. Yige presented on “screening film-in-exile” at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association last year, and her research this summer builds on that earlier work. Her mentor will be Prof. Hsin-Chin Evelyn Hsieh (National Taiwan University), and she also plans to work with two faculty from the Taiwan National University of Arts in Tainan as well as owner of the bookstore Nowhere (飛地).

Aina Yasué is a dancer, writer, and facilitator studying in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance with Prof. Janet O’Shea. Her research focuses on Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary dance companies, with particular attention to the functions of performances and community engagement events in enacting and transferring Indigenous philosophies through embodied means. Yasué hopes to remedy a gap in scholarship on Indigenous dance, which has often focused on traditional ritual practices but neglected the study of contemporary artistic expression. She will also consider support of contemporary dance companies by the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, exploring local and global perceptions of Indigenous art as well as its role in representing Taiwan to international audiences. This summer and next winter, Aina will attend two community engagement events in Taiwan organized by TAI Body Theatre, a prominent Indigenous dance company. She will be mentored by Prof. Lin Fang-Mei (Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University). Prof. Lin has been particularly active in sustaining UCLA’s vibrant partnership with NTNU over the past nine years, having participated in UCLA activities multiple times as a visiting scholar and conference presenter.

Students supported by TSL funding are pursuing projects that explore diverse forms of media from several disciplinary perspectives, while engaging with Taiwan’s complex historical and cultural legacy. The success of the TSL fellowship program has allowed these young scholars to enrich their research with fieldwork and receive crucial mentorship from prominent faculty based in Taiwan. Thanks to constant support from the Taiwan Ministry of Education over the past 12 years, many recipients of the TSL fellowship have now graduated from UCLA and are currently supervising the next generation of scholars at universities throughout the U.S. and abroad.