This lecture will explore visibility and societal significance of religion in Taiwan today, while also unveiling their earlier roots and connections with the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945).
Throughout the lecture, we will also analyze the contribution of religions to the debated issue of Taiwanese identity, and highlight both their localism and more recent transnational nature.
About the lecturer
Stefania Travagnin is a lecturer in Chinese Buddhism at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. Her research has addressed religion (mostly Buddhist doctrine, institutions, and communities) in the twentieth and twenty-first century mainland China and Taiwan, and under the three main areas of (1) religion and Chinese society; (2) textual studies; (3) concepts and methods for the study of Chinese religions. Buddhist education has been a recurrent topic in her work; she has looked at the development of Sangha education vis-à-vis the historical and political changes in early twentieth-century China; Buddhist education for the militaries during the second Sino-Japanese conflict (1937-1945); elementary non-religious education organized and delivered by the Sangha in the Republican era. Finally, she is the director of the multi-year research project ‘Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan’, which is funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
The Taiwan Matters lecture series has been funded by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (ROC) through the Taipei Mission in Stockholm, Sweden.