The joint seminar, organized by Leiden University and Academia Sinica, aims to adumbrate an emerging cultural critique of how knowledge of animals, plants, and the natural environment was produced and manipulated, and how the educated public perceived human relationship with nature in early modern China (1000-1900). This seminar will tackle the above issues from the perspective of visual art and material culture. The relationship between the natural and human world is usually generalized as harmonious and correlative in popular understanding as well as in scholarly enquiries. However, such idealization and reduction often mask the possibilities to unpack the shifting epistemological configuration and complex power dynamic between nature, culture, and politics in early modern China. It is our hypothesis that a shift in knowledge patterns of nature and the visual strategies of representing new things took place at the turn of the early modern period. The medieval knowledge system of animals, plants, and the natural environment was primarily built on symbolic and transcendental meanings and interpreted through religious practices. However, with urban growth, interest in empirical exploration, and globalized material exchange starting from the eleventh century, the medieval infatuation of the symbolic nature faced profound challenges, and the educated public set out to search for new ways to reconfigure systems of taxonomy, make visual representations, and produce cultural meanings.

To solve commercial disputes with third parties the European Union (EU) uses both legal procedures (like the Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the World Trade Organization or domestic trade defence mechanisms that are deemed consistent with WTO law) and diplomatic consultations. The purpose of this project is to explore under what conditions the EU chooses which of these two approaches, with a focus on the EUs commercial ties with countries in Asia, a region of crucial economic and political significance. A first joint seminar on this theme was held in Groningen in September 2015 (with funding from NWO and MOST, dossier 040.08.003), which allowed a small group of political scientists and lawyers based in Taiwan and the Netherlands to engage in a lively exchange on their papers, incl. the outline of a common conceptual framework and case studies. The remarkable quality of the debate and of the contributions has led all participants to pursue the idea of organising a follow-up workshop, which will allow us to fully develop the potential of the project by enhancing conceptual coherence and broadening the scope of contributions. Therefore this application for a second joint seminar has the following ambitions: a) to get further researchers on board to enhance conceptual and empirical coverage; b) to allow participants to revise papers already drafted for the first joint seminar or to develop new papers on the basis of a refined conceptual framework; and c) to steer all contributions towards a coherent and innovative edited volume with a prestigious academic publisher. The second joint seminar will be organised in Taiwan.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, a successful collaborative research program has brought together Taiwanese, Dutch (and American) scholars in the study of demographic behaviour at the household level, made possible by the exceptional historical population administrations of both Taiwan and The Netherlands. In this proposed seminar the next generation of researchers will discuss prospects for further explorations in comparative demographic history. New questions have arisen e.g. due to recent advances in biodemography and new data and analytical techniques have become available. The seminar will result in edited volume, but – more importantly – in a research agenda for comparative and collaborative studies on ordinary peoples reactions and life decisions on both sides of Eurasia.

To solve commercial disputes with third parties the European Union (EU) uses both legal procedures (like the Dispute Settlement Mechanism of the World Trade Organization or domestic trade defence mechanisms that are deemed consistent with WTO law) and diplomatic consultations. The purpose of this workshop will be to explore under what conditions the EU chooses which of these two approaches, with a focus on the EUs commercial ties with countries in Asia, a region of crucial economic and political significance. Participants will research a particular case of commercial tensions between the EU and an Asian trading partner from within the past ten years, and assess the role of legal and/or diplomatic means in managing the dispute, the use of domestic and/or international legal mechanisms, and in the case of the latter whether they are of bilateral or multilateral nature. In addition to these case studies, two or three researchers will cooperate to develop a conceptual framework that can serve as a common approach for all contributors and enhance the coherence of the undertaking.