Introduction: methodologies, epistemologies, and a Taiwan studies

In April 2004, the first conference of a new European organisation, the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The event, and the association, marked a new moment in the legitimisation of Taiwan as an autonomous cultural, political and social object of study. The island of Taiwan had come to warrant its own institutions of scholarship along with the other regions of North East Asia - Japan, China and Korea - under the rubric of a nascent field called Taiwan Studies.