QUT Centre for Justice Lunchtime Seminar
Tuesday 29 April 2025
12.30pm – 1.30pm
Developing a Utopian Taiwan? Towards social inclusion of Indigenous peoples and Ethnic Minorities
Presented by Assistant Professor Lawrence Ho, Education University of Hong Kong
Like Australia, and other countries in our region, Taiwan has a complex colonial history with successive waves of colonisation from European powers and later Japanese and Chinese. Today the country’s population is made up primarily of those who originate from mainland China – 62% – with remainder of the population from Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Macau, the Philippines and other countries. Taiwan, like Australia, is a multicultural society. Also like Australia about 3% of of its population consists of Indigenous peoples who have survived the ravages of colonisation and continue to experience social disadvantage and exclusion. These Indigenous peoples have linguistic, genetic and cultural ties to Austronesian indigenous peoples who are among Australia’s near neighbours to the north and in the Pacific.
This seminar explores the experience of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples in the context of the country’s current social arrangements and wonders if strategies that draw lessons from Hong Kong policing practices are fit for purpose. It concludes by asking if there are other lessons regarding social inclusion and justice for indigenous peoples that might be learned from Australia or other countries in the Pacific with a colonial past that might also be helpful.
Dr. Lawrence Ho is a specialist in public policy, criminal justice, policing, and public order management. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Education University of Hong Kong and an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Hong Kong. Lawrence researches in History and Sociology of Policing, Comparative Policing Practices, Policing Issues and Challenges in Greater China and East Asia. His research also extends to sports politics and sociology.
A light lunch will be provided.
Please RSVP by emailing qutc4j@qut.edu.au
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