Participating in the 2019 Winter Institute(WI) held at Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra from January 7 to 11 was a great opportunity as well as such an inspiration in terms of exchanging thoughts and ideas on the theme titled “History, Culture and Contested Memories: Global and Local Perspectives,” which has grown crucial in recent years, among wonderful students and scholars from ANU, Peking University, New York University, and the University of Tokyo.

Personally, I should admit that it was not off to an exciting beginning due to the fact that I had suffered with a bad cold. However, when I arrived in Canberra, met with excellent students and scholars, and as I got exposed to participants’ academic zeal for the given theme, needless to say along with a very good weather --- we were very fortunate about it indeed, not very hot in the midst of summer while extremely hot temperature had been reported before we arrived---, I was getting better physically and got immersed in thought-stimulating lectures and presentations --- I am still not sure which happened first, feeling better and then started to get immersed, or vise versa. Anyhow, my first visit to Canberra finally geared up.

The Winter Institute 2019 was held at Australia National University, Canberra from 7 to 11 January. The professors and students from ANU, PKU, NYU and UTokyo discussed “History, Culture and Contested Memories: Global ad Local Perspectives”. As it was the first time for me to take part in international conferences, I was feeling a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

The conference began with Professor Masashi Haneda’s paper. Explaining his well-known book Toward Creation of a New World History (2011), Prof. Haneda stressed the sense of belonging to the earth in the (anti-)global age. He also cited the essay of Jeremy Adelman and suggested two aspects of globalization, which is, the integration and the resistance toward it. Finally, he referred to the positionality of historians, which is of critical importance to me because I major in the British history as a Japanese student. I would like to be careful about who I am and whom I am writing to through my academic career.

The motivations of my joining the 2019 Winter Institute could be described as followed. Firstly, the conference this year not only brought together outstanding scholars and young prospects from ANU, PKU, NYU, and UTokyo once again but also focused on the issue of “Nationalism, Culture, and Contested Memory”, which is closely relevant to my research. Therefore, I was longing for presenting my research at the conference with an eye to making contributions to the intellectual dialogue and also getting inspiration. Secondly, I was also looking forward to taking this chance to visit Australia, in which I found many similarities with my hometown, Taiwan, in regards to demographic structure and colonial legacy. Looking back on these days not so long ago, it is the aforementioned reasons that kept me motivated throughout the struggles and frustrations during the preparation processes.

Although only one month has passed after I attended this productive and unforgettable winter institute, I feel like describing an event happened years ago when starting to write this report. This is not only the first time for me to set foot into Australia but also to use academic English that intensively, which is a precious opportunity especially for students like me majoring in Tokugawa intellectual history. The language barrier was a challenge for me, yet atmosphere throughout the whole institute remained relaxing, in a sense that all student participants were allowed, or even encouraged to communicate actively with professors and fellow students.