Taiwan Program Research Projects

What We Study

Learn about the research projects the Taiwan Program at APARC is currently exploring.

What roles do college admissions play in social inequalities? Do college admissions level the playing field between the privileged and the underprivileged? Like other East Asian countries, Taiwan has shifted from exam-based admissions to holistic screening, embracing "whole-person assessment" over the past 20 years in determining college entry. But does this reform truly help students from unprivileged backgrounds climb the social ladder, or does it reinforce existing inequalities?

Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow Ruo-Fan Liu finds that, while admission reforms provide opportunities for the working class to enter selective universities, privileged groups continue to secure their paths to college by exploiting informational transparency to avoid failures, reassessing various opportunities to optimize their chances in multi-channel admissions and outsourcing cultural guidance to “fake” an ideal candidate.

By tracing the experiences of privileged and underprivileged students throughout a year of college admissions, this research unveils the dual roles of Taiwan’s education system — both elevating social classes and perpetuating the very disparities it aims to address.
 

Lead Researcher

Ruo-Fan Liu, Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-26

Publications

Ruo-Fan Liu (2022) Pathways to College Admissions: Student Strategies and Class Variations in Activating Cultural Knowledge in Taiwan, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 31:3, 284-304.

In collaboration with the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL) at APARC, we are launching a new project focused on the roles of Taiwan’s intellectual elites and state actors in the U.S. academic hiring market. This comparative study examines the migration patterns of intellectual elites from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and China, exploring how they establish networks within and beyond national borders and how state actors from these Asian countries engage in transnational hiring processes in the United States.

We employ a mixed-method approach, coding individuals’ CV profiles into networks and conducting interviews to uncover the hidden influence that many nations exert in the U.S. academic hiring market.

Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow Ruo-Fan Liu is collaborating with APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin, who also directs SNAPL, to assemble a transnational research team for this project.

To learn more about this project, view this presentation introducing the project.

To get involved with our research team, visit our fellowships page.
 

Lead Researchers

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC, the Korea Program, and SNAPL
Ruo-Fan Liu, Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-26

Is Taiwan still a racially homogeneous country, or has it transitioned to a multicultural society? Issues of inclusion and exclusion, particularly concerning minority and marginalized communities, have gained prominence. Specifically, how do people draw boundaries between “us” and “them,” and how are these boundaries redefined as the population changes?

Stanford Next Asia Policy Postdoctoral Fellow Junki Nakahara investigates the discursive construction and justification of identity in Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. This project, “Elite Articulation of Multiculturalism,” is part of SNAPL’s Nationalism and Racism research track.

Previously, at the Taiwan Program’s inaugural conference, panelist Pei-Chia Lan, a sociologist at National Taiwan University and a 2024-25 fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, discussed how immigrants in Taiwan continually navigate the tension between integration and segregation.
 

Lead Researcher

Junki Nakahara, Stanford Next Asia Policy Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-2025

How do we study Taiwan in a digitalized era when our lives are increasingly intertwined with social media, Zoom interactions, and other digital platforms? How are researchers adapting to this “new normal” in the post-pandemic world?

Research by Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow Ruo-Fan Liu unveils how ethnographers navigate both online and offline worlds to trace the lives of Taiwanese youth, proposing three types of ethnographic tools to flexibly transition between the digital and physical worlds: multi-positioning, multi-access, and online-offline data assembly.

One of our speakers in our 2024-25 Taiwan Program seminar series, Jennifer Hsieh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, will share her study on how sounds and environmental noises from the early twentieth century can serve as novel data to understand Taiwan’s citizenship and belonging.

Lead Researcher

Ruo-Fan Liu, Taiwan Program Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024-26

Publications

Ruo-Fan Liu (2022) Hybrid Ethnography: Access, Positioning, and Data Assembly. Ethnography, (Online First).