Taiwan-UK Sex, Gender and Sexuality Health Network: making connections, establishing commonality, forwarding research

This Taiwan-UK Sex, Gender and Sexuality Health Network project will bring together social researchers working in Taiwan and the UK to build relationships, exchange ideas and plan collaborative research projects. All the researchers have interests in the health and well-being of people who are in a minority because of their bodies, their masculinity or femininity, or their sexual orientation.

Sex, gender, and sexual orientation are increasingly important concepts in the cultural life of both countries and in research. People designing general population surveys recognise a need for more sensitive questions that register human differences important for health, civil rights, and quality of life. People doing focussed investigations about sex, gender and sexuality need a common vocabulary to communicate their concepts and findings. This project will address both of these needs.

Our project starts with a small taskforce of nine researchers, who will identify and approach up to one hundred relevant researchers in each country. They will be offered a 'match-making' service to pair them with an appropriate corresponding researcher in the other country based on common interests or research methods (for example, surveys, qualitative investigations, observation, documentary analysis, experiments, literature reviewing).

We call the research couples 'net-pals' (like pen-pals but over the internet). Net-pals will be asked to address together some key questions about how they define and measure the various aspects of sex and gender, and to explore common interests. We hope the combination of significant cultural difference and prominent academic similarity will spark fresh ideas for research investigations.

With the help of this network of researchers, the taskforce will compile a directory of questions that are or can be used in research to classify or measure sex, gender and sexual orientation. This will be available to the research network and will be used as a foundation for focussed discussion of the concepts in two facilitated groups of 10 researchers, one in each country. These discussions will identify challenges and opportunities for SGS measurement and research with SGS minorities.

All net-pals and other researchers will be invited to a mixed online/in-person workshop on SGS measurement, delivered by the taskforce in Taiwan to coincide with the International Conference on Gender in Science & Technology.

To deepen the research relationship between the taskforce members, two UK researchers will visit Taiwan to present ideas and participate in an SGS stakeholders conference about the project where people can comment on the net-pals' research ideas. Following this process, six net-pal pairs will be invited and supported to make short films about topics of interest for dissemination on social media.

For balance, three Taiwan researchers will make a reciprocal visit to the UK to review the final directory of questions (with matching questions in English and Mandarin Chinese), to meet with significant UK scholars, and to attend a half-day symposium at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where the taskforce will review and present the outcomes of the overall project.

In summary, we plan to establish a Taiwan-UK research network that will create channels of communication, identify valid and appropriate measures, and develop collaborative UK-Taiwan research projects. We intend that these together will improve research and thereby increase the health and well-being of people marginalised because of their sex, their gender and/or their sexuality.