Felix Brender 王哲謙
International Relations & Security · Global China & Taiwan
Research
My research asks how security, legitimacy and political agency become operative through relationships, institutions and everyday practice. It develops through two longer-standing programmes — relational security and Global China; and Taiwan, identity and political order — alongside current work on Taiwan–Somaliland relations and Chinese security in the Gulf.
The pages below distinguish established expertise, current research and developing projects rather than treating every adjacent topic as an equal field of specialisation.
Established research programme
How does protection become usable in everyday life? My research on Chinese residents in Juba examines how formal security measures become operative through relationships, reciprocity, trust and social embeddedness. It develops a relational account of security that shifts attention from whether protection exists formally to how it is made credible and actionable in practice.
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Current research programme
My Taiwan research asks how political identity is made through institutions, memory and public narratives. I treat transitional justice not only as a mechanism for addressing authoritarian wrongdoing, but also as a process that helps define political community, legitimacy and belonging — and can therefore produce boundaries of inclusion as well as repair.
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Current research project
How does Taiwan sustain diplomatic standing when formal recognition is constrained? My work on Taiwan–Somaliland examines how reciprocal diplomatic practice creates political agency outside conventional recognition competition, and how inherited Republic of China institutions are rearticulated to represent Taiwan internationally.
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Developing research programme
My Gulf project asks whether relational security still matters where states are strong, rules are enforced and formal protection is readily available. It follows Chinese residents and firms into the UAE and Saudi Arabia to examine when formal commitments deliver security and when relationships still decide how protection works in practice.
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