Members of the TAP team were invited by the Vienna Center of Taiwan Studies (VCTS) to present their research at the international conference “Taiwan as a Contact Zone: Connecting to the German-Speaking World,” held on 3–4 January 2025. The conference aimed to strengthen scholarship on Taiwan by fostering transnational and interdisciplinary approaches, both in historical work and in
contemporary research.

Prof Dr Christine Moll-Murata (TAP partner, Ruhr University Bochum) introduced the work of the Bochum Research Unit for Taiwanese Culture and Literature and provided an overview of the TAP project. Chaired by Prof Shieh Jhy-Wey, Dr Felix Brender—a former recipient of a TAP travel grant—presented findings from his TAP-funded fieldwork in a paper entitled “Narrating the Past to Create the Today: Institutionalised Memory-Making as National Identity Construction.” Dr Fliß contributed “German Influences on Taiwanese Literature: New Objectivity in Taiwan and Its Expression in Modern Taiwanese Poetry,” while Dr Perkuhn presented aspects of her current research on “Taiwan’s Policy Framework towards a Cooperation-Driven Green Energy Transition.”