The 2013 Asia-Pacific EU Center Graduate Student Conference has just been held in Kyushu, Japan, and the Taiwan delegation of EUTW (Europe in Taiwan) once again had good news from this conference: two NTU graduate students received the best presentation awards. Po Hao Wang and Hui Chun Yeh, the graduate students of the NTU Department of Political Sciences received the best presentation awards from the political topics of “History and Culture” and “Law and Politics”. They outstood and shined in the 2013 Asia-Pacific EU Center Graduate Student Conference. To be noted, Taiwan is the most awarded country from this graduate students conference, and this shows the world that how solid and promising the academic training is of the Taiwanese graduate students.

The European Institute holds EU Center Graduate Student Conference for graduate students and doctoral students of EU research to present their research papers every year. The second conference was held in National Taiwan University in association with EUTW (Europe in Taiwan) on February 22nd to 23rd, 2011. And on February 23rd, 2012, the third conference was held in Pusan National University in South Korea. As for the 2013 EU Center Graduate Student Conference, it has just been held in Kyushu University in Japan on February 4th to 6th for the forth conference in association with the European Institute there. Graduate students and doctoral students of EU research from the Asia-Pacific countries presented their research papers in the 2013 Asia-Pacific EU Center Graduate Students Conference. The 28 published papers are on topics related to politics, law, history, culture and economy in European Union, and the participants are from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau.

The EUTW (Europe in Taiwan) delegation that just has just been to the Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference was led by the Director General, Professor Lei Yang of the EU Center at National Sun Yat-Sen University, a consortium university of the European Centre in Taiwan along with the company of Chia Chin Cheng, the CEO of EUTW. They attended the 2013 EU Centre Graduate Student Conference with graduate and doctoral students from Department of Political Sciences at National Taiwan University (Hui Chun Yeh, Po Hao Wang and Wei Ying Chiu) and Department of Diplomacy at National Chengchi University (Chien Hao Huang and I Kwei Yang). According to Chia Chin Cheng, the CEO of EUTW, the awarded students won the presentations by receiving the honor and the recognition of the judges because of their confident performances and fluent presentation skills as well as the solid content and the relevant research topics.

Rudy Filon, the Counselor, Head of Press, Public and Cultural Affairs of Delegation of the EU to Japan said in the closing speech that in addition to confirming again that the Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference held by Regional EU Centre will contribute a lot to deepening the overall researches on the European Union. Filon is also impressed by the excellent performances and the steady presentations of the doctoral and graduate students at the conference. During the conference the judges and scholars also reached a decision by having decided that the next Regional EU Conference will be organized by Martin Holland, the Director of the EU Centre in New Zealand, for the EU Centre Graduate Student Conference in 2014.

In order to promote and to encourage more Taiwanese graduate and doctoral students to work on the academic research areas along with the presentations and publications on the related topics of the European Union, the EUTW (Europe in Taiwan) will host the 2013 National Student Workshop on European Studies on May 24th, 2013. The judges will nominate several excellent participants from this summer workshop, and these nominates will received the priority to be recommended to the 2014 Regional EU Center Graduate Student Conference for the international presentation. March 20th will be the deadline of turning in the paper abstracts. The 2013 National Student Workshop on European Studies welcomes all the doctoral and graduate students who are interested in these conferences.

The EU (European Union) began establishing the European Union Centers at the prestigious universities in 1998 for the purpose of encouraging the European studies. The EUTW (European Union Centre in Taiwan) acts as a platform for exchanges and corporation within its host countries to establish global and regional network to support the European studies. Work on making EU Centre in Taiwan a reality began in early 2008 after the European Commission expressed its intention to create an office, and thus the Preparatory Committee of National Taiwan University was immediately established. The consortium consists of National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, National Chung Hsing University, Catholic Fu Jen University, Tamkung University, National Sun Yat-Sen University and National Dong Hua University. Acting as the leading figure of a consortium of the seven major universities in Taiwan, National Taiwan University proposed its plan and signed the agreement with the European Commission. Under the terms of the agreement, the EUTW is located in National Taiwan University, and an office for coordination cooperation is situated at each consortium university.

For more information and the related activities, please see the link below:
http://www.eutw.org.tw