This talk will focus on Professor Fell's career, from being a Chinese studies student at the University of Leeds to a long, successful career in Taiwan-focused studies. At the end of his talk, there will be a Q&A section in which you can ask either about the shape of Taiwanese politics or about his career in general. 

This talk will be especially interesting to anyone who would like to have a career in academia, as well as to those who are fascinated by contemporary politics in Taiwan.

DAFYDD J. FELL is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also the Director of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies. In 2004 he helped establish the European Association of Taiwan Studies. He has published numerous articles on political parties and electioneering in Taiwan. His first book was Party Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2005), which analyzed party change in the first fifteen years of multi-party competition. His second book was Government and Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2011) and the second edition was published in early 2018. He has edited a number of volumes on Taiwan, with the most recent Taiwan Studies Revisited, published in 2019, Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities (2021) and Taiwan’s Contemporary Indigenous Peoples (2021). His latest single authored book was Taiwan’s Green Parties (Routledge 2021) and in 2026 he just published a co-authored book in Chinese with two of the Green Party Taiwan’s leaders titled綠黨在台灣：第一個三十年. In 2025 he co-authored a new book that examines the history of Taiwan’s sugar railways titled The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways. He is also the book series editor for the Routledge Research on Taiwan Series.