edited by Hsieh Hsin-Chin, Adina Zemanek and Chang Ti-Han

Isle of Movement: Migration and Shifting Ethnoscapes in Taiwan explores how migration has continuously reshaped Taiwan’s ethnic landscape and cultural identities across different historical periods. Bringing together literary works and scholarly essays, this anthology traces the movements of Japanese settlers and Taiwan-born Japanese, Mainlanders in military dependents’ villages, Malaysian Chinese intellectuals and writers, Hakka communities and their Bàk-Góng beliefs, and new immigrants from Southeast Asia. Together, these texts illuminate the intertwined histories of migration, settlement, cultural belonging, and identity formation, revealing Taiwan as a dynamic crossroads of peoples, languages, and memories. Featuring works by Tsai Yi-Chen, Su Wei-Chen, Li Yong-Ping, Kan Yao-Ming, Chen Eugene Yuchin, and leading scholars in Taiwan’s migration, ethnic, and literary studies, the anthology demonstrates how literature and scholarship together illuminate the making of Taiwan’s diverse ethnoscapes. Rather than viewing ethnicity as fixed or homogeneous, Isle of Movement reimagines Taiwan as an island shaped by continuous mobility, encounter, and cultural transformation.

About the Editors

Hsieh Hsin-Chin is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Taiwan University. Before joining NTU, she taught at Wesleyan University in the U.S. and at the National Taipei University of Education in Taiwan. She has served as Secretary-General of the Association for Taiwan Literature and was a visiting scholar at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She is also a member of the editorial board for The Cambria Sinophone Translation Series and has guest-edited issues for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and Taiwan Lit. Her research interests include contemporary Taiwan literature, film and documentary studies, migration studies, and transmedia narrative. Her work particularly examines the relationship between contemporary cultural production and migration—both inbound and outbound—in the context of Taiwan. She is the co-editor of The Afterlives of Taiwan Literature (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Press, 2023).

Adina Zemanek worked at Jagiellonian University in Krakow before joining the University of Lancashire in the UK, where she is currently an Affiliate Lecturer. Between 2016 and 2022, she served as an Executive Board member of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS). Her research explores the role of everyday material culture and sensorial experience in constructing Taiwaneseness through tourist souvenirs, film, comics and picture books. She has also examined nation branding, the use of comics in public diplomacy, and Taiwan’s citizen diplomacy in Europe. Her work has been published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, positions: asia critique, and China Perspectives. She edited Sinophone Comics: Histories, Identities, Medialities, an open-access volume published by De Gruyter in 2026. Since 2024, she has contributed to “Books from Taiwan,” an initiative funded by the Ministry of Culture, as a translator of graphic novels and picture books.

Chang Ti-Han is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Taiwan Studies at SOAS, University of London, and Deputy Director of the Centre of Taiwan Studies. Her teaching and research centre on contemporary Taiwan, with particular interests in eco-literature, postcolonial literature, cinema and cultural studies in regional and global contexts.
Before joining SOAS, she was a Lecturer in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Lancashire. Alongside her teaching and research, Ti-Han plays an active role in the Taiwan Studies community. She currently serves as General Secretary for the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS), and has previously served as Treasurer for the Francophone Association of Taiwan Studies (AFET). She has co-edited several scholarly works and translation anthologies on Taiwan’s literature, identity, and cultural politics.

Published in collaboration with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Science and Technology Council, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, and National Taiwan University.

ISBN: 978-1-913891-66-4
Imprint: Balestier Academic
Publication date:  16 September 2026
Format: Paperback 229mm x 152mm
Pages: 178 pp

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