Biography
Po-Han Lee finished his LLB at National Chung-Hsing University and LLM (International Law) at Soochow University. He once took part in the Observer Delegation representing the Republic of China (Taiwan) at the World Health Assembly meetings.
He has completed his PhD in Sociology, along with which he also obtained a PGDip in Social Research Methods and an Associate Fellowship of Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). He is now also an Advisory Committee member of the UK-China Media and Cultural Studies Association (UCMeCSA).
Besides research, he serves as the editor-in-chief of Plain Law Movement, as well as a columnist for 01 Philosophy, a contributor to Queerology and other new-media publics (see below). Beyond academia, he hopes to find out an alternative path to knowledge production, community collaboration, and dialogue construction. He also shares critical thoughts and study notes on his own blog: les voix.
Role
PhD (Sociology) and Doctoral Tutor (Sociology & Law)
Thesis Title: How is nothing produced and justified? International inaction in the face of the health disparities of sexual and gender minorities
Community and Business
Engagements:
- Asian Society of International Law (Student Member)
- British Sociological Association (UK Concessionary Member)
- Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (Internal Graduate)
- Chinese Society of International Law
- European International Studies Association (EISA)
- International Law Association - British Branch (Student Associate Member)
- International Sociological Association
- North American Taiwan Studies Association (Planning Committee Member)
- Sexuality Studies Association (Student Member)
- Sussex Asia Centre (Postgraduate Committee Member)
- Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research
- Sussex Rights and Justice Research Centre
- Taiwanese Society of International Law
- UK-China Media and Cultural Studies Association (Advisory Committee Member)
- Yuen-Li Liang International Law Centre
Organisation/Volunteering:
- North American Taiwan Studies Association 2020 Annual Conference (Planning Committee), University of California Irvine, 22-24 May 2020.
- Workshop on ‘Enlightening’ Taiwan: Communicating Knowledge as/in Social Activism (with Chia-Yu Liang), University of Sussex, 15/11/2019 [sponsored by European Association for Taiwan Studies Workshop Grant].
- ‘Towards Gender Equality: Clashes in Law’ Conference (with Gizem Guney and David Davies), University of Sussex, 20/06/2018 [sponsored by Sussex Doctoral School Researcher-Led Initiative Fund].
- MAGic2015 on ‘Anthropology and Global Health: interrogating theory, policy and practice’ (European Association of Social Anthropologists), University of Sussex, 9-11 September 2015.
Grants & Awards:
- Sussex Fund Doctoral Overseas Conference Grants (DOC), Doctoral School, University of Sussex (2018).
- Sussex Rights and Justice Research Centre’s Postgraduate Bursary Scheme, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex (2016 & 2018) .
- Government Scholarship for Study Abroad (GSSA), Ministry of Education, ROC (Taiwan) (2014-2017)
- Soochow University Model Achievement & Elite Student Award (2010).
- Excellent Teaching Assistant Award (on the Module 'Normative Theory of Human Rights'), Northern Taiwan Teaching & Learning Resource Centre (2010).
- Diplomacy Scholarship for International Law and International Relations Study, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) (2009).
- Soochow University Law School Outstanding Graduate Student Award: LL.M. Total Waiver (2007-2008).
Moot court competition & coaching: Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition (national championship, 2008-10; 2012-13); Hardy C. Dillard Award for the Best Memorial & Winner of the National Round (2009); Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Moot Court Competition (national championship, 2010).
Model United Nations & coaching: NTU National Taiwan Model United Nations (Outstanding Diplomacy Award, 2008); National Chengchi University Taipei Model United Nations (Excellent Delegation Award, 2008).
Qualifications
PhD Sociology, University of Sussex (UK), 2019, with a thesis on How is nothing produced and justified? International inaction in the face of the health disparities of sexual and gender minorities;
Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), 2018;
PGDip in Social Research Methods, University of Sussex (UK), 2016;
LLM in International Law, Soochow University (Taiwan), 2013, with a dissertation on The nexus of the right to health and public health in the context of international human rights law;
Certificate of Course in Minority Rights, Chang Fo-Chuan Center for Human Rights Studies, 2012;
Certificate of Public International Law Programme, Xiamen Academy of International Law, 2009;
LLB in Financial and Economic Law, National Chung Hsing University (Taiwan), 2007.
Activities
PLM Publications & Special Issues
- The law of living in jianghu: Plain Law Movement [江湖在走，法律要懂] (2017). Taipei: UNITAS Publishing.
- Calling on the force of law: Plain Law Movement [召喚法力] (2019). New Taipei: CPTW.
- A history of ROC diplomatic break-offs [中華民國斷交史] (2019). Taipei: UNITAS Publishing.
- LGBT Rights & Marriage Equality
- Sexuality, Eroticism, Porn & Law
- Taking ‘Human Rights’ Seriously
- Sexual Autonomy, GBV & Abuse
Plain Law Movement
- One century of institutionalising international civil service: To those backgrounding global governance, 07/05/2019
- Developing humanitarianism in international law: Transnational refugee crises and natural disasters, 07/03/2018
- Customary international law: Mirroring the devil in the details of states’ speech acts, 30/08/2017
- Revise ICJ judgements? Malaysia’s contentions of the 2008 decision on the Pedra Branca dispute, 22/06/2017
- ‘Really! Judge Akay of the MICT was arrested?’: On the diplomatic immunity of UN officials, 21/06/2017
- ‘Being different isn't being wrong’: Combating discrimination by de-pathologisation (with Yu, Jheng-Min), 16/05/2017
- Book review of ‘Governing (Through) Rights’: Governing rights and governing through rights, 16/04/2017
- Multiple but simpler means of ‘funerals’: The law and cultural meanings of natural burial, 24/01/2017
- The case of NHS commissioning PreEP: Is AIDS ‘prevention as treatment’?, 01/12/2016
- ‘No treaty obligation, yet still, there’re rights’: The evolving international human rights, 29/11/2016
- ICJ after 70 years: The increasing complication in the service of peace and justice, 24/11/2016
- The ‘plainisation’ of legal instruments: A legislative approach, 06/11/2016
- UN Human Rights Council: A significant progress or multinational ritual?, 27/10/2016
- Infinite loop of stigma and neglect: HIV and non-discrimination from the CESCR’s perspective, 30/08/2016
- We are family? The new relationship between UN and the International Organisation for Migration, 04/08/2016
- Human desire for peace: A lesson from the South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China), 15/07/2016
- Homophobia is not an illness, but it does kill: The right to health of sexual and gender minorities, 20/06/2016
- UN Secretary-General: States' civil servant or peoples' diplomat?, 26/04/2016
- Assistance from international community? On disaster response and relief in international law, 17/04/2016
- Taiwan's 'meaningful participation' in international institutions: WHA-model as an example, 12/04/2016
- The war on IS, the result in Syria: Illegality and illegitimacy of the allied forces under international law, 15/12/2015
- Difference of terror and non-difference of violence: Paris attacks and France's self-defence, 18/11/2015
- Unpacking international criminal law by MH17 incident and ICC Statute-related controversies, 28/10/2015
Queerology
- Am I included in their ‘we’? When #MeToo hits feminist masters, 24/10/2018
- Love is easy? Open relationship: A form of irreducible and unreproducible intimate experience, 11/05/2018
- Neutral, reasonable and objective? Less is more: Two lessons from #MeToo, 13/04/2018
- The ‘public healthification’ of anti-pornography: A new strategy of ‘Pro-Family’ movements, 20/10/2017
- Marriage without love: The illiberty in the freedom to choose, 12/09/2017
- A contingently formed yet irreducible assemblage: Tongzhi literature in historicised Taiwan, 02/07/2017
- ‘Rainbow’ after the storm: Queer parenting, diverse families, and the right of the child to be heard, 10/05/2017
- ‘Always stay away from police!’: Sexual minorities’ (un)freedom of assembly and street politics, 18/04/2017
- President Tsai’s silent transcript and the heteroglossia of identity politics, 09/03/2017
- The power of narratives and narrating: For/Getting those broken closets, 16/09/2016
- Comradeship of cock? The development of tongzhi movement from a ‘pornified’ perspective, 19/08/2016
- The invisible health killer: Discrimination, 27/10/2015
Queer Watch
- Police violence against sexual/gender minorities in Russia, Tunisia and Indonesia, 31/01/2018
- Trump and his gay spokesmen: From LGBTI rights envoy to NATO ambassador, 09/03/2017
- Brighton LGBT Pride: When it becomes part of popular culture, 12/08/2016
- A way to survive: Kurya straight women’s same-sex marriage in Tanzania, 12/08/2016
- The equal entitlements to the ‘peace rights’ of Colombian women and LGBT victims, 04/08/2016
- A letter to queer Cambodians: No worries, just talk to me when you need!, 28/11/2015
- The re-proposal of ‘stone-the-gays’ bill in Kenya, 20/11/2015
- TGEU’s call upon WHO’s support for gender variant children by de-labelling, 25/10/2015
- Being gay in Yemen: My taken-for-grantedness, his privileges, 25/10/2015
- WMA’s commitment to treating transgender people with respect, 21/10/2015
- Malta: A country having no gay marriage but the best rights safeguarding for sexual minorities in Europe, 16/10/2015
- APTN’s Blueprint for the Provision of Comprehensive Care for Trans People and Trans Communities in Asia and the Pacific, 09/10/2015
- Via Grindr: A gay refugee’s story in Serbia, 04/10/2015
- Summary of the Regional Dialogue on LGBTI Rights and Health in Asia-Pacific, 04/10/2015
Opinion.UDN
- The Gambia v. Myanmar: On Human Rights Day, Suu Kyi to defend ‘genocide’ at the ICJ, 10/12/2019
- A Brexit episode: The unlawfulness of Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament, 27/09/2019
- In between the UK and Mauritius: The Chagos Islanders’ endless journey returning home, 10/07/2019
- The struggle of God, or men: The controversial entry of women to Hindu Temple (with Lin, Ruyu), 17/01/2019
- Decriminalisation as decolonisation: A tortuous way to liberating non-normative sex in India, 11/09/2018
- Private entrepreneurs more efficient than the public sector? The myth of public-private partnerships, 06/06/2018
- Sexual rights of people with disabilities: The unaccounted ‘accessibility’ of sex-district law (with Kao, Jui-Fu), 25/04/2018
- The rebirth of cold war? Regulating espionage: A normative lacuna of international community, 10/04/2018
- Children’s sexual and relationship education: Whether and how to teach?, 19/12/2017
- A ‘public health crisis’? Let’s talk about the revival of anti-porn legislation in the US, 19/10/2017
- ‘It’s all for your own good!’: The best interest in the child’s right to education, 17/07/2017
- Human rights are not privileges: The right to health contentions of the ‘War on Drugs’, 31/03/2017
- Don't say you love me on the land of ‘atolan’: The stories behind the delimitation of traditional territories (with Yang, Kuei-Chih), 28/03/2017
- The key to localising human rights values: Establishing a national human rights institution according to law (with Liu, Lung-Cheng), 20/01/2017
- Who can define ‘marriage’? Heterosexual hegemony and transitional justice for the right to family life (with Yang, Kuei-Chih), 23/11/2016
- Special legislation for same-sex marriage is per se discriminatory (with Yang, Kuei-Chih), 22/11/2016
- Lessons from les vies ‘en rose’: The can and can’t of the 2004 Gender Equity Education Act, 27/10/2016
- The story of ‘quán-lì’ (rights): An imperfect translation, 22/09/2016
- Between severe punishment and harm reduction: An introduction of international drug law, 19/08/2016
Liberty Times
- Out of game? You’ve got rules to follow! The buffer set up by the 50-year-old VCLT, 24/05/2019
- Repercussions in the post-gay marriage UK: The ‘fightback’ of heterosexual couples?, 06/11/2018
- Barks worse than bites? The first lawsuit for same-sex marriage in China, 25/06/2018
- On the Lee Ming-che incident: Enforced disappearances as the most horrifying social control practice, 16/08/2017
- The ‘preferential right to purchase’ the auctioned Pingxi Guesthouse of Taiyang Mining Company?, 21/07/2017
- On the World Refugee Day, were you #WithRefugees?, 26/06/2017
- Disputes among adults need children's say: Family mediation as the rainbow after the storm, 01/06/2017
- The misunderstood and misinterpreted traditional territories and informed consent of indigenous peoples, 28/03/2017
- Domestic procedures for international treaties: The law regarding ratification and commencement, 16/01/2017
Vocus
- Taiwan’s particular situation and its practices of internalising international human rights norms, 25/09/2019
- The unfinished decolonisation: Incomplete Mauritius and the ‘homeless’ Chagossians, 21/08/2019
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights 70 years: Let’s talk about the politics of rights, 10/12/2017
- ‘What if I were no-body’: The Yogyakarta Principles at ten, what’s then?, 11/10/2017
- ‘Thoughtcrime is death.’: Remembering the victims of enforced disappearance, 24/08/2017
- Transgressors beholding the limits of international human rights law: Refugees and stateless persons, 25/04/2017
01 Philosophy
- Sex/gender, secularism, and ‘femonationalism’: Sara Farris and Joan Scott in conversation, 11/12/2019
- J. Ann Tickner: The IR's blindspots and its three common misunderstandings about feminism, 15/09/2019
- Border thinking as method (III): Decolonial options out/side modernity, 01/03/2019
- Border thinking as method (II): Resisting border/territorial epistemologies, 28/02/2019
- Border thinking as method (I): ‘Modernity as coloniality’ and decoloniality, 18/02/2019
- ‘The curious feminist’: Cynthia Enloe’s gender analysis of international politics, 09/10/2018
- Joan Scott on the usefulness of an analytical category: ‘Gender’ as a question, not an answer, 30/07/2018
- The crisis of feminism? Re-interrogating Chantal Mouffe’s radical democratic politics, 11/06/2018
- Becoming-woman: Rosi Braidotti’s nomadological feminism, 24/03/2018
- Martha Nussbaum’s feminist internationalism and the #MeToo campaign, 01/02/2018
- Dangerous liaison with neoliberalism? Nancy Fraser on second-wave feminism’s ‘ambivalence’, 05/01/2018
- From free speech to public health: Revisit Ronald Dworkin’s arguments against anti-porn movement, 29/09/2017
- What does, can and should ‘queer theory’ – or, the theory of queerness – do? (II), 06/09/2017
- What does, can and should ‘queer theory’ – or, the theory of queerness – do? (I), 06/09/2017
- Steven Seidman’s ‘Social Theories of Sexuality: Marxism and Feminism’ (II), 25/07/2017
- Steven Seidman’s ‘Social Theories of Sexuality: Marxism and Feminism’ (I), 25/07/2017
Crossing
- ‘The only gay in the caravan’: The death of the traveller, Henry Chapman, 26/12/2019
- Parents’ right against LGBT-inclusive education? Reflecting Birmingham protest on the debate in Taiwan, 17/07/2019
- Not just consumers: China Airlines pilot strike and the ‘solidarity’ of workers (with Han, Tsai-Meng & Liu, Roy), 18/02/2019
- Beyond realpolitik, what’s still left? The recent developments in international law, 25/01/2019
- Law cannot control, but neither can it tolerate, prejudice: The marriage ‘inequality’ referendum (with Yang, Kuei-Chih & Wang, Ting-Yu), 19/11/2018
- Human suffering as a political tool: Human rights talk with political leverage considerations, 21/09/2018
Other writings
- Tongzhi literature and historicised Taiwan, Formosa Salon, 01/07/2017
- ‘Law as life’: The messages behind the ‘Legal Life’ project, Judicial Reform Foundation, 31/12/2016
- How 'rainbow factors' are influencing Taiwan local elections?, Gay Star News, 03/12/2014
- Human Rights, Minorities and Religious Freedom (II) (with Lee, Yi-En), Newsletter of the Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law, 15/02/2013
- Human Rights, Minorities and Religious Freedom (I) (with Lee, Yi-En), Newsletter of the Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law, 18/12/2012
- Decoupling policy in minimum wages for local and migrant workers in international law: Preliminary analysis (with Lo, Sheng-Hsuan & Huang, Hai-Ning), Newsletter of the Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law, 04/11/2012