The 2013 Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference in Kyushu, Japan has smoothly closed its curtains. Taiwan delegation once again reports success. Graduate students from the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, Po-hao Wang and Hui-Chun Yeh, take Best Presentation Awards on issues in “History and Culture” and “Law and Politics” respectively. Their performance outshine at this conference. Taiwan is also the most awarded country, and which shows the solid academic training of Taiwanese graduate students.

Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference is an event held by the regional EU Centre for doctoral and graduate students of EU research. The second conference was held on 22-23 of February in year 2011 by the European Union Centre in Taiwan at the BL Building in National Taiwan University. The third conference was held last year on 2-3 of February by the EU Centre at Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea. The fourth conference this year was organized by the EU Centre at Kyushu University in Japan on 4-6 of February. Graduate students from Asia-Pacific regions—such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Macao—all attended this event, publishing 28 papers on topics related to EU politics, law, history, culture, economics, etc.

The Taiwan delegation this time was led by the Director General, Lei Yang, of the EU Centre at National Sun Yat-sen University, a consortium university of the European Union Centre in Taiwan, with the collaboration of the Executive Director of EUTW, Marc Chia-Ching Cheng. They attended the event with graduate and doctoral students from Department of Political Science 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. The Executive Director, Marc Chia-Ching Cheng said, not only did confident performances and natural and fluent answers to questions gain the favors of judges, solid content and relevant research are the main reasons for the awarded students’ wins.

Counsellor, Head of Press, Public, and Cultural Affair of Delegation of the EU to Japan, Rudie Filon said in the closing speech, besides confirming once again that the Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference held by regional EU Centres will contribute to deepening overall EU researches, he is also impressed by the exceedingly wonderful presentations and steady demeanor in speech of the students. Regional EU Centre has decided during the conference that the Director of EU Centres in New Zealand, Martin Holland, will organize next year’s Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference in 2014.

To encourage graduate students to participate in academic researches and publications related to EU research, European Centre in Taiwan will host the 2013 National Student Workshop on European Studies this year on May 24, 2013. Several excellent participants will be nominated, and will receive recommended priority to participate in the 2014 Regional EU Centre Graduate Student Conference. The deadline for turning in paper abstracts is on March 20. Interested graduate and doctoral students are gladly welcomed to submit.