Asia Pacific Observatory

Jasper Rong-feng Hsieh is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan. He holds an MA in arts administration and a DBA with strategic management concentration, both from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining the academic community. He has been a senior arts administrator for different cities’ cultural agencies and professional arts organizations in Taiwan. Hsieh teaches arts management in graduate program and conducts research in the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship in arts and cultural sectors. He engaged students in a series of experimental projects and action research related to the incorporation of tourism entrepreneurship and community development in the historic harbor district of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, local communities, and arts institutions. He has also been engaged in arts entrepreneuring and the sphere of innovation incubation, providing counseling on the establishment, management, and marketing of cultural and creative micro-enterprises in local communities.

Iping Liang received her Ph. D. in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently professor of English and American Studies at National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests include Herman Melville, Asian American Studies, Ecocritical Visual Representations, and Global Indigeneity Studies. She is the author/editor of I’m Migrant: New Perspectives in the Studies of Oversea Chinese (2016), Asia/Americas: Asian American Literatures in Taiwan (2016), Storytelling Survivance: A Critical Reading in Native American Fiction (forthcoming), Asia/Americas: Asian American Literatures in Taiwan (2013), Ghost Dances: Towards a Native American Gothic (2006). She’s also a board member of Multiethnic Studies of Europe and the Americas (2012-2016); Association for the Studies of Literature and Environment in Taiwan (2015-2017); Executive Editor of Translocal Chinese: The East Asian Perspective (2015-2018); as well as Director of International Cooperation at NTNU, where she overlooks global partnership, student mobility, and study abroad programs.

Huei-min Tsai is Professor of Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. She also acts as Executive Secretary for IHDP National Committee- Taipei (a transition team to Future Earth –Taiwan), Executive Secretary for the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Islands, Executive Committee Member of International Small Islands Studies Association (ISISA), and Coordinator for Northern Taiwan Environmental Education Regional Center. Her research interests mainly focus on human-environment interactions as well as island resilience and sustainability issues in various types of environments, particularly in small islands, Indigenous communities, and coastal sea areas. The aspects of her research include environmental history, bio-cultural diversity, social-ecological systems, historical political ecology, sustainability science, resilience theory, nature-society co-evolution, and local & Indigenous knowledge systems.

Karen Thornber is Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She is the author of three major scholarly monographs. Most recent is Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care (Brill 2020), which draws on literatures from 20 languages and close to 50 nations, across six continents. Thornber’s two previous major scholarly monographs both won multiple international awards: Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures (Michigan 2012) and Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Translations of Japanese Literature (Harvard 2009).  Thornber’s fourth single-authored monograph, Gender Justice and Asian Literatures, is under preliminary contract with the Modern Languages Association Publication Program. In addition, Thornber is (co)editor of several volumes including one on Global Indigeneities and Environment, and the award-winning translator of Japanese literature. Thornber has held many leadership positions at Harvard, including the Harvard Environmental Humanities Initiative.

Robin Chen-hsing Tsai received his Ph.D. from National Taiwan University. Currently he is Chair and Professor of the English Department at Tamkang University. His areas of specialization include ecocriticism, climate change fiction, and environmental science fiction. His recent publications include Gary Snyder, Nature, and Ecological Communication (2010), “(Post)Modernity in the Penal Colony: Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish” (2011), “Memory in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” (2012), “Climate Change, Nature, and Ecological Communication in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital Trilogy” (2012), , and Ecological Crisis and Literary Studies (2019) and an edited book entitled Introduction to Ecoliterature (2013), and “Technology, the Environment and Biopolitics in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis” (2014), co-edited work (with Serena Chou and Guy Redmer) Key Readings in Ecology (2015).