Asia Pacific Observatory

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.

Ikue Kina is Professor at the International Institute for Okinawan Studies at the University of Ryukyus. Her fields of research focus on U.S. Women’s Literature, Native North American Literature, Chicano/a Literature, Ecofeminist Criticism, and Border Cultures, and has recently been extended to comparative reading of Okinawan Literature. She is an author of the book Kokyo no Topology [Topology of Home: Ecocriticism of Location and Place] (Suiseisha Publishing) and has her essays anthologized in such books as Encyclopedia of American Culture by Otsuki Shoten Publisher, Kyoiki no Bungaku [Literatures of Borderlands] (21st-Century Literature Series by Iwanami Publisher, Tokyo) and Kokan no Poetikusu [Poetics of Environmental Correspondences] (Suiseisha Publishing Company, Tokyo). She has also co-authored Native American no Bungaku [Native American Literature], the first collection of critical essays on Native North American Literature in Japanese published by Minerva Publishing Company in Kyoto.

Eric Clark is a Professor in the Department of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden. Most of his work focuses on urban contexts, but some of his more recent research into historical political ecology and (sustainable) development focuses on islands. He is vice chair of the International Geographical Union Commission on Islands, and member of the advisory board of the International Small Island Studies Association.  His teaching includes supervision of theses, lectures and field trips in PhD and masters courses in human geography and human ecology. 

His research interests include island studies, geography, Area Studies, culture and economics, Development Studies, and Environmental Sustainability. He has published extensively on the political economy of space, urban sustainable governance, financialization, sustainability and the right to the island, models of island development, island cultural geography, and nature-society interactions on Islands.

Neqou Soqluman is born in the East Valley of Yushan of Bunun tribe. With a master’s degree in ecology, he have founded ‘hunter’ schools, as they are known locally, which teach Indigenous outdoor skills, but more importantly emphasize traditional values. He establishes “The Son of Yushan—the Bunun Mountain Guide Tour” to promote tribal eco-turism of mountain hiking. He is also a writer, and his novel The Legend of East Valley Shafei is regarded as Taiwanese version of The Lord of the Ring. Neqou seeks to establish himself as a member of the Bunun tribe to share to the world its enchanting culture from language, ethnic literature, folk tales, ethnic ecological wisdom and traditional ballads.

Szu-Hsien Lee, Associate Professor in Music Department at NSYSU, received her Ph. D. in Music Composition and Theory from University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. She has received honors and recognition for her original compositions. Her compositions have been performed in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, USA, Germany, and many cities in China. She also has a diversity of interests in musical expressions, including dance, theatre, film, and multimedia performance. She is currently the resident composer of Baroque Camerata, the resident chamber orchestra of NSYSU. Her music album Splendor— When Western Baroque Meets Taiwanese Folk Songs, the arrangements of Taiwanese folk songs, written for Baroque Camerata, the resident chamber orchestra in National Sun Yat-sen University, was nominated in Taiwan Gold Melody Award, 2007. The arrangement Toy Airplane Canon was also nominated as the best arrangement in Taiwan Gold Melody Award, 2010.

Xiangzhan Cheng is a professor of aesthetics, a Chang Jiang Scholar, a deputy dean of the School of Literature at Shandong University, China, a deputy director of Shandong University Research Center for Literary Theory and Aesthetics, a deputy director of Shandong University Research Center for Ecological Civilization and Ecoaesthetics, a visiting scholar of Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University (2006-2007), the executive editor of Newsletter on Ecoaesthetics and Ecocriticism, and a member of International Advisory Board of Contemporary Aesthetics. His fields of research include the history of Chinese aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, ecological aesthetics (i.e. ecoaesthetics). His most recent books are A Study of Environmental Aesthetics in China (Zhengzhou: Henan People’s Press, 2009), Ecological Aesthetics and Ecological Assessment and Planning (Zhengzhou: Henan People’s Press, 2013) and An Introduction to Ecoaesthetics (Ji’nan: Shandong Publishing House of Arts and Literature, 2020). Eight of his work on ecological aesthetics is introduced in Allen Carlson’s “Environmental Aesthetics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/environmental-aesthetics/).