In 1928, Professor Tsai Yuan-pei, a major exponent of ethnology in China and then President of Academia Sinica, established the Ethnology Section in the Institute of Social Sciences. In 1934 the Ethnology Section was transferred to the Institute of History and Philology. In 1955, after Academia Sinica had been moved to Taiwan, a preparatory office was established to conduct ethnographic research on the Han Chinese and the nearly 200,000 indigenous Austronesian people in Taiwan. This preparatory office finally led to the establishment of the Institute of Ethnology in 1965, with Professor Ling Shun-sheng as its first director.
