Transit Asia Research Network

Critical Concepts Writing Workshop
2025-04-24 - 2025-04-26 | Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore), Block 6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934, Singapore
Critical Concepts Writing Workshop

24–26 April 2025Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore)

The Critical Concepts Writing Workshop is a key event within the project Critical Reorientation in the Age of Digital Technology: Intersections between Human Craft, Geopolitics, and Artistic Intervention, and is part of the CHCI Initiative: Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies.
The Workshop invites 22 senior and early-career researchers to develop a book of 100 critical concepts collaboratively. Preparatory online meetings will be held before the workshop in Singapore to set up the collective writing. During the on-site Workshop, participants will engage in “book sprints” to produce interdisciplinary entries in text, images, drawings, and code, fostering alternative knowledge production and experimental approaches to conceptualisation.
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The Chip Era and Digital Governance Joint-Project Workshop
2025-11-13 - 2025-11-15 | National Yangming Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Hsinchu, Taiwan
The Chip Era and Digital Governance Joint-Project Workshop
13–15 November 2025
National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

On 13–15 November 2025, the International Center for Culture Studies (ICCS) at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and the Trans-Asia Research Network (TARN) convened The Chip Era and Digital Governance workshop. Held in Hsinchu, the global nexus of semiconductor manufacturing, the event marked a critical juncture in a transnational research initiative designed to interrogate the material foundations of the contemporary world order. Crucially, the programme grounded high-level theory in industrial reality through strategically timed field visits. The workshop commenced with a tour of the Nano Facility Center at NYCU, which immediately preceded a special address by Jack Sun, former CTO of TSMC. Sun’s technical and strategic insights provided a vital industrial context for the academic debates that followed. This engagement with the physical infrastructure of the “chip era” concluded on the final day with a separate visit to the TSMC Innovation Museum, further immersing scholars in the logistical complexities that underpin the digital economy.
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Synopsis: Digital Deception Surveillance Technologies and Information Manipulation
2026-01-30 14:00 - 16:30 (Asia/Shanghai) | Google Meet
Digital Deception

Surveillance Technologies and Information Manipulation

11-12 June, 2026
The Chip Era and Digital Governance Forum 11

📌Date and Time: January 30, 2026, from 14:00 to 16:30, Taipei Time (GMT+8)📌Format: Online📌Online meeting Link: https://meet.google.com/qzz-pn…📌Forum Language: English
📌Synopsis
Digital technologies reshape the governance techniques as well as social patterns and habits. The recent promotion of smart cities or safe cities as an obvious step in the creation of a safer, more just, sustainable, and convenient future seems an ideal and obvious choice for the states.
However, urban surveillance technologies, a part of smart cities, are endorsed under the premise of fighting crime and making a safer environment. While certainly there is an element of perceived safety due to the omnipresence of the public surveillance cameras, the features such as facial recognition technology and data collection are often not mentioned to the public. Additionally, the technological cooperations among countries generate possibilities for expansion of foreign geopolitical and socio-economic implications, including those around privacy, national sovereignty, and citizens’ rights. The withholding of certain information regarding the architecture of digital technologies and their origin could be interpreted as information manipulation.
Why are certain pieces of information withheld from the public? What are the risks of global technological cooperation and the digital expansion of foreign countries in various regions? Do smart cities with surveillance technologies protect citizens or give the state more control? These are just some of the issues that we hope to address.
📌Speakers
Who’s Watching? Digital Surveillance in Governance and How It Affects Us
💬Jonas Lund-Tønnesen
Researcher, Department of Government, University of Bergen, Norway
Jonas Lund-Tønnesen holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Oslo, Norway. His research focuses on digitalization of the public sector, including artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, and digital changes in organizations. Lund-Tønnesen’s recent work explores the role of digital surveillance in governance, and the effects surveillance has on citizens’ behavior and attitudes in different settings, such as during a crisis and in the workplace.
Surveillance Creep in South Africa’s ‘Not-So-Safe’ Cities
💬Heidi Swart
Investigative Journalist, South African
Heidi Swart is a South African freelance investigative journalist. She writes about espionage, security, surveillance, and data privacy issues in both the public and private spheres. She’s written extensively about illegal government surveillance, interception technologies, cyberspying and cybersecurity, risks to critical communications infrastructure, social media monitoring, data mining, video surveillance, artificial intelligence in surveillance, biometrics, and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on surveillance practices.
Synthetic Lies: How Deepfakes Reshape Power, Participation, and Public Trust in Democratic Systems
💬Maria Pawelec
Research Associate, International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tübingen, Germany
Maria Pawelec is a Research Associate at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen. She has a background in political science and works on technology and media ethics. Her research interests include new technologies and democracy, AI ethics, deepfakes, disinformation, technology and platform governance.
📌OrganizerInternational Center for Cultural Studies (ICCS), National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung UniversitySubproject II: The Chip Era and Digital Governance (Principal Investigator: Joyce C.H. Liu)
📌Funding SourceHigher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education (MOE) in TaiwanMOE-SPROUT 2.0, Conflict, Justice, Decolonization: Asia in Transition in the 21st Century
ICCS Director and Principal Investigator: Joyce C.H. Liu
✴️Research Cluster｜Sub-project 2: The Chip Era and Digital Governance
✴️Principal Investigator｜Joyce C.H. Liu

ISSH2026 Conference: The Social in the Digital
2026-06-11 - 2026-06-12 | Ton Duc Thang University, 19 Nguyen Huu Tho Street, Tan Phong Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
The Social in the Digital
11-12 June, 2026
Ton Duc Thang University
19 Nguyen Huu Tho Street, Tan Phong Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The 4th International Conference on Innovations in the Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH 2026) is the fourth edition of our international conference series, following three previously successful events. This conference is organized by Ton Duc Thang University in Vietnam, University of Melbourne in Australia; National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan; Jadavpur University in India; Wako University in Japan; Gampaha Wickramarachchi University of Indigenous Medicine in Sri Lanka; Nueva Vizcaya State University in Philippines; Oakton Community College in USA; Centre for Research in Policy, Communication and Society in India; TARN-Transit Asia Research Network in Taiwan.

Important Dates

Abstract Submission: 31st January 2026.
Notification of paper acceptance: 28th February 2026.
Full paper submission: 5th April 2026.
Registration and payment: 10th April 2026.
Conference dates: 11th & 12th of June 2026.

REGISTRATION
Conference Fee

Authors (Direct): 150 USD/ paper
Authors (Mater student/ PhD Candidate): 100 USD/ paper
Authors (Student): 50 USD/ paper
From Sponsoring Institutions: 50% of Registration fee
Co-authors (Direct): 75 USD/ person
Listener: free

Note:
The registration fee does not include bank transfer or transaction charges. All transfer fees must be borne by the participant.
Please contact us regarding childcare as needed. We will arrange care in consultation and according to your needs.
SUBMISSION PROCESS
Submission process and basis for inclusion [via Link on website when ready]

Abstracts of approximately 200 words are required for all manuscripts submitted.
Authors are invited to submit unpublished, original work as full conference paper of 2,500 to at most 3,500 words including abstract and references.
Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order: title page (including acknowledgements as well as Funding and grant-awarding bodies); abstract; keywords; main text; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figure caption(s) (as a list).
Each manuscript should include 5 to 6 keywords.
Conference languages: English
All submitted abstracts/ papers will go through a blind peer review process and those accepted will be published in conference proceedings.
Please send your abstract and a short bionote to the conference email: issh2026@tdtu.edu.vn

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2026 TARN Meeting (Kyung Hee University, Korea)
2026-09-04 - 2026-09-06 | Global Campus, Kyung Hee University, Korea
2026 TARN Meeting

Chip Era: Governance, Infrastructure, Labour, Mobility

Global Campus, Kyung Hee University, Korea
Dates: 4–6 September 2026
The 2026 TARN Meeting will be held from 4th to 6th September 2026 at the Global Campus, Kyung Hee University, Korea. Jointly organised by the Transit Asia Research Network (TARN), the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies (CCCS), Kyung Hee University, and the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, the Meeting is conceived as a mid-term sharing and commenting session for a collaborative two-volume book project examining how semiconductors, as the foundation of digital infrastructures, are reshaping geopolitics, governance, labour, and capital in the twenty-first century. Participants will present the progress of their respective chapters, with the collective aim of submitting full manuscripts by the end of 2026.
The project comprises two volumes published under the Routledge Studies on Think Asia series:
Volume I: The Chip Era: Digital Governance and the Infrastructural Reordering of Sovereignty in Asia and Beyond
Volume II: Digital Enclosures in the Chip Era: Labour, Mobility, and Infrastructural Precarity

Participants

Name
Title
Affiliation

Brett Neilson
Professor
Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia

Sandro Mezzadra
Professor
Department of the Arts, University of Bologna, Italy

Ned Rossiter
Professor
Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Professor
Department of British and American Culture Studies, Kyung Hee University, South Korea

Wei-I Lee
Chief Editor
Voices of Photography

Joyce C. H. Liu
Professor / Director
International Centre for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Megha Shrivastava
Assistant Professor
PES University, India

Jagannath Panda
Professor
Institute for Security and Development Policy, Sweden

Roger Chi-Feng Liu
Assistant Professor
National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan

Nguyen Thi Trang
Assistant Professor
Faculty of History, Thai Nguyen University of Education, Vietnam

Pawan Adhikari
Research Fellow
Centre for Social Innovation and Foreign Policy (CESIF), Nepal

Lungani Nelson Hlongwa
Postdoctoral Fellow
International Centre for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Jasmin Dall’Agnola
Senior Research and Teaching Associate
Media and Internet Governance, IKMZ, University of Zurich

Katarzyna Szpargała
PhD Candidate
Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Lou Mo
Artist and Curator
n/a

Musquiqui Chihying
Artist, Researcher, and Experimental Film Director
n/a

Ranabir Samaddar
Professor / Director
Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India

Monika Verma
MSCA Researcher
Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc

Tzu-Kai Liu
Assistant Professor
Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Dolma Tsering
Postdoctoral Fellow
International Centre for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Maidul Islam
Professor of Political Science
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India

Qi Li
PhD Candidate / Researcher
Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies / International Centre for Cultural Studies, NYCU, Taiwan

Poonam Sharma
Postdoctoral Fellow
International Centre for Cultural Studies, NYCU, Taiwan

Nguyen Nu Nguyet Anh
Professor
Faculty of Sociology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Yu-Fan Chiu
Associate Professor
School of Law, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Lisa Yuk-ming Leung
Professor
Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Ngai Keung Chan
Assistant Professor
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abhijit Roy
Professor / Chair
Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University / Centre for Research in Policy, Communication and Society, Kolkata

Rafał Smoczyński
Head of Religious Studies Department
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

Manuela Bojadzijev
Professor / Director
Institute for European Ethnology and Berlin Institute for Migration Studies, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany

Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury
Professor
Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India

Ko-Lun Chen
Postdoctoral Fellow
International Centre for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
