Remembering Taiwan’s Martial Law Conference

Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University

Date and time: Tuesday 27 July 2021 10:00am–Friday 30 July 2021 2:00pm

Location: Online (with 2 in-person events in Canberra)

Registration is essential

The artwork features a wedding invitation with anti-communist slogan from the National Museum of Taiwan History Collection.

The martial law period (1947–87) lies at the heart of narratives shaping Taiwanese identities, criss-crossing the foundations of contemporary society. Experiences of this period are relived through expressions of individual and collective memories, through arts and literature, language and politics, and everyday minutiae. These stories emerge from historical prohibition, creating powerful connections with Taiwan’s living history and layering upon the present a multi-layered narrative of heroes, villains, and victims.

How are such deeply ingrained, personal, and political experiences told? Remembering Taiwan’s Martial Law Conference 憶起戒嚴 examines the diversity of voices across lands and spaces, platforms and mediums, lines, and cleavages that form the foundation of the story of modern Taiwan.

This page includes panel discussions only.

View Full Conference Program

To register for keynote lectures, please visit:

Writing about sex and politics: From authoritarianism to democracy‘, Li, Ang 李昂, Taiwanese feminist writer

1970s-80s Taiwan: What led to the end of martial law?‘, Yao, Chia-wen 姚嘉文, Senior Adviser to President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文

Rethinking Modernist and Realist Photography in 1970s Taiwan‘, Kuo, Li-Hsin 郭力昕, Dean, College of Communication, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

(online & in-person) Memory and Resistance: The martial law period and Taiwan’s future in the era of Xi Jinping‘, Mark Harrison, Senior Lecturer (Chinese Studies), University of Tasmania

Zoom details will be disseminated one day in advance.