Po-chia Tseng

Title: Assistant Professor
Appointment: Institute of Sociology
Tel: +886-3-5715131 ext. 34537
Email: tsengpc@mx.nthu.edu.tw
Research Areas: Medical Sociology; Science, Technology and Society; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Global Ethnography

Education

  • Ph.D., Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • M.A., Sociology, National Tsing Hua University
  • B.A., Humanities and Social Sciences, National Tsing Hua University

Professional Experiences

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica

Self-Introduction

My research interests lie at the intersection of power, difference/boundary, materiality, and scale. Recently I investigate how social structural conditions affect health disparities, as well as how shifting global and state health projects and emerging technoscience shape biopolitical subjectivities. I pay particular attention to the co-shaping of difference and politics in those processes.

Publications

Journal Articles (selected)

  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2024. "Budgets and Biologicals: The Bio-economization of HIV Governance." The Sociological Review 72(6): 1177-1192.
  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2021. "Subordinated Agency: Negotiating the Biomedicalisation of Masculinity among Gay Men Living with HIV." Sociology of Health & Illness 43(6): 1486-1500.
  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2021. "Fear of Disconnecting: Global Health Imaginations and the Transformations of the Taiwanese State." New Global Studies 15(2-3): 145-163.
  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2020. "Framing the Material Global: The Grounded Politics of HIV Testing Scale-Up." New Global Studies 14(3): 353-371.
  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2020. "Governing AIDS, Rescaling the Social: A Global Ethnography Perspective." Taiwanese Sociology 40: 89-110.
  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2013. "Beyond Biomedical and Social Models: An Actor-Network Analysis of the Construction of Beep-Ball Players' Techniques." Taiwanese Journal for Science, Technology and Medicine 17: 187-232.

Book Chapters

  • Tseng, Po-Chia. 2026. "Attached: The Refashioning of Affective Marginal Citizens in a Biomedical Era." In Feeling Taiwan: Emotions in Everyday Politics, Social Movements, and Research, edited By Po-Han Lee, Alvaro Martinez-Lacabe, and Yu-chin Tseng. Routledge.
  • Huang, Hwa-Yen, and Po-Chia Tseng. 2024. "Chronic Illness." Pp. 118-131 in Encyclopedia of Adolescence (Second Edition), edited by Wendy Troop-Gordon and Enrique Neblett. Academic Press.

Book Reviews

  • The Journey of Care. Book Review. Mapping the Landscapes of Care: Displacing, Reassembling and Imagining Chronic Disease Practices in Taiwan. By Wen-Yuan Lin. Taipei: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. 2023.
  • Toward Global Sexual Diversity. Book Review. Sexuality and the Rise of China: The Post-1990s Gay Generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. By Travis S. K. Kong. Duke University Press. 2023.

Teachings

Institute of Sociology

  • Medical Sociology
  • Sociology of Gender
  • Sociology of the Body
  • Community Fieldwork and Ethnography Writing (co-taught with Professor Jui-Hua Chen)

Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Sciences

  • Classical Sociological Theory
  • Social Research Methods (I)
  • More-than-Human Sociology
  • Emotions, Power and Society
  • Globalization and Society

School of Medicine

  • Medical Professionalism (II) – Humanities and Ethics (co-taught)

Services (selected)

  • Director, Gender Studies Program, Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTHU (Aug 2025 - present)
  • Deputy Secretary-General, Taiwan Society for Disability Studies (Dec 2022 - present)
  • Editorial Board Member, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (EASTS) (Jan 2026 - present)

Honors & Awards (selected)

  • 2024. NTHU New Faculty Research Award
  • 2021. Research Prize (Honorable Mention), Humanities Research Institute, UIUC
  • 2020. Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers Grant, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
  • 2020. Beslow Graduate Paper Award, Department of Sociology, UIUC
  • 2020. Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Graduate College, UIUC
  • 2019. Dissertation Fellowship for ROC Students Abroad, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
  • 2018. Bastian Dissertation Fellowship, Department of Sociology, UIUC
  • 2012. Fellowship for Study Abroad Ministry of Education, Taiwan
  • 2012. Wang Yuh-Fong Memorial Award, Taiwan Science, Technology and Society Association
  • 2011. Science, Technology and Society Interdisciplinary Research Scholarship, NTHU
  • 2010. Fieldwork Scholarship, Institute of Sociology, NTHU 2009. Sung Kao-Jung Memorial Scholarship, Institute of Sociology, NTHU