In Autumn 2025, the Department of Asian Studies at Palacký University Olomouc issued a call for short-term visiting scholars in Taiwan Studies under the Global Taiwan Chair project. The call invited scholars to undertake a one- or two-month research stay in Olomouc between February and June 2026, with expected activities including guest lectures, academic writing, and the development of joint research proposals.
Two scholars were selected for one-month residencies: Yu-Sung Su (February 2026) and Dramane G. Thiombiano (June 2026). We look forward to welcoming both scholars to Olomouc.
Below are short biographical profiles of each visiting scholar.
Yu-Sung Su is a Professor of Political Science at Tsinghua University, where he also serves as Adjunct Professor at the Institute for International and Area Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2009, following prior graduate training at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and New York University. His academic formation reflects a strong interdisciplinary orientation that combines comparative politics with advanced quantitative and statistical methodology.
Professor Su’s research focuses on comparative political development, with substantive expertise in Latin American politics, East Asian politics, and Chinese politics in comparative perspective. A defining feature of his scholarship is the systematic integration of rigorous political methodology into substantive political analysis. His research has been widely published across disciplinary boundaries. Professor Su’s articles appear in leading journals in political science, sociology, economics, statistics, mathematics, civil engineering, and computer science, including Democratization, Biometrika, The Annals of Applied Statistics, Journal of Statistical Software, Global Environmental Change, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.
Beyond journal publications, Professor Su is the author of Propensity Score Matching: From Statistical Correlation to Causal Inference, a widely used methodological monograph that systematically introduces matching methods for applied social science research. He has also authored numerous book chapters and Chinese-language publications that engage debates on democratization, political trust, governance, climate policy, and computational social science in the Chinese context. Professor Su has also made lasting contributions to the infrastructure of quantitative social science through software development. He is a core contributor to several widely used R packages, including arm, mi, and r2jags, which support regression modeling, multiple imputation, and Bayesian analysis via JAGS.
Professor Su teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative political development, democratization, quantitative analysis, political methodology, game theory, and big data analytics for social science. He has received multiple awards for research excellence, teaching innovation, and methodological contributions.
Dramane G. Thiombiano is from Burkina Faso, West Africa. He is an Assistant Professor in the department of Business Administration at National Yunlin University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. He previously taught at the International Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Affairs at National Sun Yat-Sen University, where he earned his master’s degree in 2010 and PhD in 2016.
His research interests focus on China–Africa relations, Taiwan’s political economy, cross-strait relations, and Taiwan-Africa relations, with broader attention to international political economy and development issues.
He is the author and co-author of several scholarly publications, including “The Impact of China on the Agency and Bargaining Power of African Countries in the International System” (International Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 2019); and “The Beijing Consensus versus the Washington Consensus in Africa: Why Is the Chinese Model Gaining Ground?” (Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities, 2016). His work also includes studies on African migration and integration in Taiwan, such as “An Initial Exploration of the Adaptation of African New Residents in Taiwan” (African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 2023) and “A Study on Employment Opportunities and Challenges of African Graduates in Taiwan” (Asian and African Studies, under second review).
Dr. Dramane has contributed a book chapter on China–Africa–Europe trilateral relations and is currently editing an academic volume examining African perspectives on China–Africa relations. His ongoing research explores female entrepreneurship in emerging markets, with a particular focus on institutional constraints and development outcomes.