ISSUE 12 | SEP 2021
AI and Big Data in Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Hong Kong Students Stand Up for Girls’ Rights
Face Masks and Cultural Identity on YouTube
VR Experience Helps with First-person Perspectives
Guiding Patients with Hope-based Treatments
Social Policy & Administration Linguistics Communication & Media Studies
QS WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS BY SUBJECT 2021
ISSUE 12 | SEP 2021 Department of Asian and International Studies
Department of Media and Communication
Department of Chinese and History
Department of Public Policy
Department of English
Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Department of Linguistics and Translation Chan Feng Men-ling Chan Shuk-lin Language Centre Centre for Public Affairs and Law Centre for Communication Research Centre for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy Southeast Asia Research Centre The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies
FEATURE
PEOPLE
RESEARCH
04 Digital Revolution 12 Work for Your Dreams 16 Runs in the Family 20 Face Masks and Cultural Identity on YouTube 21 To Survive, a Blockchain Game must be a Game First
22 Pandemic and the Future of Trade
23 Tongqi Stepping Out of the Shadow of Their Gay Husbands
EVENTS
24 Hong Kong Students Stand Up for Girls’ Rights
26 Fostering the Professional Development of Secondary Educators SOCIAL IMPACT 28 Looking for Hope to Help Patients Cope with Life Altering Situations TEACHING & LEARNING 32 Students Build Impressive Event Planner Portfolio through Big Project
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
NEWS
34 VR Experience Helps with First-Person Perspectives 36 Never Stop Learning 40 Virtual Conference Provides Linguistic Insights
41 Grant Secured for Scholars to Explore How People Live with Endemic Diseases
42 Recognising Knowledge Transfer Efforts
43 Newly Launched Student Chapter with Big Idea
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Digital Revolution Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are not just driving high-tech industries, they are transforming the humanities and social sciences too
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n the 21st century, our everyday social activities are routinely influenced by widespread systems of digital computer technology. This is often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution where the increased use of AI, smart technologies and robotics are reshaping our lives. Higher education is no exception to this transformation. The data that can be derived from modern information systems is continuous and vast. It can be tremendously useful in research studies but scholars working in the humanities and social sciences must, by necessity, examine critically the new data sources available and the methodologies used to collect data if they are to protect the academic rigour of their work.
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A New Academic Learning Environment With the world changing at an increasingly fast pace this is no easy feat. Data used to come purely in analogue forms such as images, videos and/or scanned material uploaded onto the web. Digitisation processes have converted this material into digital form, providing ample material for digital humanities research. “Simply speaking, the ‘digital humanities’ involves the careful combination of two things: humanistic study and computational power,” explains Dr TSUI Lik-hang, Assistant Professor at CityU’s Department of Chinese and History, and convenor of the Digital Society research cluster at CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS).
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Tsui has previously stated that digital humanities are a way to ask, redefine and answer questions with a more intelligent set of tools. “These ‘tools’ do not only include digital technologies, but also our own renewed and adapted mindset and questions based on the new digital environment that is shaping so much of our academic inquiry,” he adds. The emergence of AI has taken data collection to the next level. “About 10 years ago, some scientists at Microsoft already suggested the development of AI would signify the fourth paradigm shift in scientific inquiry. This means data-intensive science discovery is going to fundamentally change the way we approach a lot of social, political and scientific phenomena,” says Associate Professor Dr Edmund CHENG of CityU’s Department of Public Policy. “Also, much research
that could not really be done in the past can now be carried out, and any new findings will allow us to revisit extant theories or conclusions.” As a political scientist, Cheng asserts that the use of big data creates interdisciplinary collaboration. “For example, I am working with my colleagues in the School of Law to have a better mapping of public sentiments to court judgements. These are things that lawyers in the past had no access to or could not do.”
Big Data, Big Challenges However, the increased processing power and application of AI and big data in the public sphere is creating new issues. “You have power over your own data but you also have a responsibility associated with
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it,” Cheng explains, before noting obvious concerns regarding data security and online storage via cloud computing. “You can see that many governments are actually enacting new regulations to make sure that these challenges are somehow met.” Another challenge is that “big humanities data” is often different from data from other fields, according to Tsui. The scale of it is much larger than the amount of material that humanities scholars traditionally focus on, even if humanities data in digital form is still much smaller than the amount of data harnessed in certain other fields. However, the relatively manageable size of the digital data does not mean it is easier to analyse. Humanities data is highly uneven and extremely specific. Hence, attempting to create, organise or even “decipher” such data without adequate humanities training has potentially serious pitfalls. Bridging this skill gap is imperative for the current generation of students whatever their discipline. To help, Cheng tries to incorporate The application of big data is powerful, but new challenges such as data security and privacy emerge.
The “digital humanities” involves the careful combination of two things: humanistic study and computational power Dr Tsui Lik-hang
Tsui believes that the digital humanities requires a new mindset to go alongside the new technologies.
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Cheng believes that with the rise of big data there are many new opportunities available for social science scholars.
Data-intensive computing is going to fundamentally change the way we approach a lot of social, political and scientific phenomena Dr Edmund Cheng
as many new technologies into his classes as possible. “When you have many technological advances, you need to help the students understand all this research, and you can help them with tools, techniques, and measurement standards.” Despite the difficulties of working with so much information, Cheng is aware of the new opportunities simultaneously being created. “Big data allows researchers from different parts of the world to tap into digital information from all over without having to travel to particular areas, thus lowering costs,” he points out. “I also see an opportunity for unleashing organisational infrastructure and capability. We are having some cross-departmental collaborations with colleagues who are developing data repositories. These joint efforts expect to see the establishment of new labs on technology and policy, such as computational social science, in the foreseeable future.” Another difficulty Cheng highlights are the differences in digital literacy among various disciplines. New technologies and techniques are often received with scepticism or even hostility until the new ways and measurement renovations are proven to be more effective
and efficient. “There are always traditional qualitative researchers who tend to suggest you just enter the field to understand, acquire knowledge and draw contexts accurately. Also, different schools have a benchmark among their peers, which creates challenges in using new methods.”
Leading the Data Revolution Though implementing AI and big data in the social sciences and humanities is a relatively new trend – one accompanied with a healthy dose of the aforementioned scepticism – one area in which big data has always existed is audience research for the media industry. “Most people may not know that TV ratings researchers are among the earliest users of big data,” says Professor Jonathan ZHU, Chair Professor of CityU’s Department of Media and Communication and School of Data Science. “TV ratings research, dating back to the 1950s, developed a rich set of concepts and metrics to process continuous audience behaviour, which remain the template for today’s Internet industry to follow for user analytics.”
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The media has always been an early adopter of new technologies. Newspapers in the 19th century were the first industry to use the telegraph, and radio and television were among the first to use radio waves and satellites. “AI will become essential to the new media because all online media and social media use AI for daily operations. However, the media has not been ready to use all the latest technologies – blockchain technology, for example. Yet I believe a few years down the road blockchain could become the backbone system for the media to store and exchange information.” Zhu is a social scientist by training, specialising in media and communication. “In the old days, we studied traditional media such as newspapers and television, among others,” he recalls. “The media industry has largely moved online now. We follow the industry, with much of our teaching and our own research migrated to cyberspace.” There are two approaches to the social sciences – the quantitative and qualitative. Zhu himself trained in the quantitative tradition where research was done with sample surveys and lab experiments. But even in those days he and his team made full use of big data like TV ratings records.
Blockchain may become the backbone system for the media to store and exchange information in a few years' time.
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Most people don’t know that TV ratings researchers are among the earliest users of big data, whose work has remained a major intellectual source for today’s Internet user analytics Professor Jonathan Zhu
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Zhu has moved from studying traditional media to utilising today’s modern computational tools and big data.
As a result, the transition towards using big data and modern computational tools has been a natural one for him. “The only difference between what we did in the past and what we are doing now is the size of the data and its accessibility,” Zhu explains. “In the past, the data was largely collected and owned by media or marketing research companies. Now most data has become more publicly accessible.” Not only have these changes altered the way researchers work but it has also affected the way scholars train their students. It is hugely important, insists Zhu, to develop computationally intensive courses. His Department, for instance, has increased the time spent training students on how to use the latest AI and machine learning methods, and they make sure to make good use of the (so far) free and large-scale data available to them. This pivot has not only been observed by teachers but also by students as well. “Even before they come to our programme, students know that the market is changing its requirements for the future
labour force. The students want to come here to study the latest technologies and methods,” says Zhu. That is why the Department has continuously expanded its computational staff and course offering.
Speak My Language AI is not only used to gauge audience sentiment but also helps in perfecting applications and their analytical observations. Dr John LEE, Associate Professor at CityU’s Department of Linguistics and Translation, focuses on using AI and big data to aid computer programmes in understanding human language. Lee’s background in computer science launched him toward a doctoral degree at MIT where his PhD topic focused on automatic grammatical error correction. In a nutshell, this allows for a computer to automatically provide feedback and correct errors in the text you write. This is a subfield in computational linguistics. The traditional methodology in computational linguistics is to conduct deep analysis on a small set of examples. To write a
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The amount of data that is required to understand human language is vast, according to Lee, a computational linguist.
AI in the humanities and social sciences is as challenging and as sophisticated as in other disciplines. How to make a chatbot automatically generate an appropriate reply is as difficult as anything else Dr John Lee
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programme that can correct grammatical errors, one may consult grammar books and from there one would try to distil all the grammatical rules and implement them in the system. “This traditional practice can be very accurate, but it tends to only cover a relatively small set of errors,” remarks Lee. “Can you imagine writing a whole bunch of rules to recognise all errors? You’d have to work very hard to come up with all these rules and even then they might only cover a small percentage of all the possible problems in a text.” In contrast, Lee explains, the more recent approach is to use statistical methods trained on a large number of text samples. The advantage of doing that is that you get broader coverage. The downside is that these samples are more “noisy” – not every single passage that you read online, for example, is written in good English. Even if the majority of your samples are good, there is still the risk of running into lower quality samples. The amount of data that is required to make something like this work for a wide variety of text is immense. Add in the fact that the Chinese language is significantly different from, for example, the English language, and any algorithm employed from one language to the next will need to be adjusted, a source of considerable work.
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“In the Chinese language there is no spacing between characters to indicate where a word begins or where a word ends,” explains Lee. This reflects Tsui’s opinion that it is not easy to analyse specific big humanities data regardless of the size of the digital information available. “So there is the extra step with regards to recognising what is a word.” Lee’s latest project is the development of a Cantonese counselling chatbot app. This is an AI-enabled automated chat system that Lee hopes will help enhance students’ mental well-being. “AI in the humanities and social sciences is as challenging and as sophisticated as in other disciplines,” says Lee. “How to make a chatbot automatically generate an appropriate reply is as difficult as anything else.” Machine learning is a natural next step in computational linguistics. And while AI can contribute to the development of this field, linguistics will also be able to help AI develop. As AI focuses on applying statistical approaches to big data, the complexity of our ever-evolving human languages presents new challenges for computers that function by identifying logic and patterns. By further developing the field of computational linguistics in higher education institutions, this in turn will help with the advancement of AI and its near limitless potential.
The Future is Now The implementation of AI, its technologies and big data are all moving into the mainstream and reshaping the status quo in research and
education. To process digital data for the humanities, according to Tsui, a renewed mindset is key to tackling the new digital environment now pervasive in academia. As such, the ways in which students are instructed are changing to prepare them adequately for an evolving job market, and the existing labour force must also “upskill” to keep track. Zhu’s Department created a new stream on media data analytics five years ago to equip students with knowledge and skills to collect, process, and visualise big data from online sources. Graduates from the stream have landed good jobs locally and overseas. As a result of these technological advances, universities and research centres are entering an era of further multidisciplinary cooperation between departments, as exemplified by Cheng whose public sentiment research and method school found collaboration with associative counterparts. The crunching of huge amounts of data not only helps analyse trends, but in turn helps to develop the very AI that computes them. Lee’s linguistic programmes are at the forefront of logic and pattern identification which are core to the algorithm input necessary to develop AI. Regardless of the scepticism that exists between those who favour traditional qualitative research and those who embrace innovative tools that bring quantity of data, the application of new digital technologies in the humanities and social sciences is inevitable. Indeed, it has already begun and started facilitating exciting opportunities that will usher academia into a new age.
Scholars must remain vigilant and treat the new wealth of information, and its sources, with skepticism if they are to maintain academic standards.
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PEOPLE
Work for Your Dreams Professor Christine HUANG Yi-hui of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) recalls a decorated career that has taken her from Taiwan to the US and now to Hong Kong
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rofessor Christine Huang Yi-hui, CLASS new Associate Dean (Faculty and Research) and Chair Professor of Communication and Media, hails from a small village in southern Taiwan. Her career has spanned continents and different fields within the communication discipline. Huang has likened her professional development to a soul-searching journey. In part, such an outlook is inspired by Paulo COELHO, one of her favourite authors. It was Coelho’s book The Alchemist that drove her to pursue her own “personal legend” – one’s ultimate spiritual purpose in life – a life lesson the professor hopes to impart to all her students.
Towards a Vocation Huang did not enter academia from the get-go. After completing her Master’s studies in the United States, she worked for international public relations firms and agencies. However, when a chance to work as a lecturer at a university arose, Huang embraced the change. “I realised that I like academia very much,” she explains, “because I am given a lot of room for autonomy. It is the perfect space where I can pursue my curiosities and knowledge and enjoy a kind of freedom.” Following years of speaking at events and lecturing in universities, Huang’s specialism has developed to include strategic communication; public relations management; conflict resolution and negotiation; crisis management and risk communication; and crosscultural communication and relationships.
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Huang decided to further her studies and pursue a doctoral degree at the University of Maryland (US) a year after her child was born. Juggling a PhD and motherhood, Huang remembers this time as a challenging but essential part of her journey in becoming the best version of herself. “At the time when I chose the field of strategic communication, or so-called public relations, it was an area very few scholars touched upon,” says Huang. “How academia defines the area of public relations is very different from the general perceptions of PR. Scholars look at conflict resolution, crisis and risk communication, while the general public look at it from the perspective of revenue generation such as marketing communication. My approach is yet different. I approach the field from the perspective of cost reduction resulting from resolving conflict and managing crisis that come in the form of activism or complaints.” As a conflict resolution scholar, Huang has spoken at over 100 events around the world, delivering about 20 keynote speeches internationally. One of her main areas of research touches on modern Greater Chinese societies. Her many case studies on crises and risks allow Huang to draw major lessons for public sector organisations and private corporations to help formulate their policies. Her work earned her an invitation to deliver a keynote speech on engagement from an East Asian culture perspective at the annual International Atomic Energy Agency conference 2018 as the sole non-technology expert in the congregation.
PEOPLE
Huang has worked hard in pursuit of her “personal legend” – working all around the world and successfully balancing her career alongside her family life.
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PEOPLE
The Value of Hard Work Huang is no stranger to being invited to reputable places. A longtime dream of Huang was to attend Harvard Law School’s prestigious Program on Negotiation as a visiting professor. “I actually already had an invitation from another programme at Harvard University as a Fulbright Scholar, but the Program on Negotiation was still my first priority,” says Huang. She still remembers the morning of 5 June 2003 well. This was the day she received an email from the Program on Negotiation director that stipulated if Huang was still interested, she could get an invitation providing she could supply a recommendation from Professor Thomas SCHELLING. Schelling is a Nobel Laureate (2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) and Professor Emeritus from Harvard who joined the University of Maryland upon his retirement from the former. To Huang, everything fell into place. “The University of Maryland is where I took his courses and Professor Schelling served on my PhD dissertation committee.” Huang was one of Schelling’s students in a class of 40 and one of the two who received top marks. Huang wrote to her former professor and within 10 minutes he replied that not only would he recommend her but he would do so by calling Harvard directly. “That was a very rewarding experience for me and it was a very exciting year,” she recollects. “Having this recommendation and gaining this opportunity was a verification of all my hard work.”
How academia defines the area of public relations or strategic communication is very different from the general perceptions of PR Professor Christine Huang Yi-hui
Huang encourages young scholars to pursue personal goals with courage, determination and a childlike innocence.
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PEOPLE
With her wealth of experience, Huang is keen to help the young scholars of today, and hopes to bridge gaps between departments not traditionally aligned.
The professor often shares this story with her students as an example of the kind of opportunities that can lie in wait when one does the hard work. “I never imagined there would be a day when this kind of opportunity would come my way. And this actually inspired me to work harder as a mentor and teacher. I would do whatever I can to help my students because I know that even a very small amount of effort on my part may mean a lot to someone else and that it may influence their entire life.”
Leading the Next Generation Helping young scholars is now a priority for Huang who, these days, devotes most of her time to research. “CityU is best known for its engineering and technology curriculum. It’s an energetic and fastmoving environment. But in between the science and technology, and humanities and social sciences departments there are still some gaps to be filled. I think my research and know-how may help bridge those gaps.”
As a newly elected Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) – the first Chinese female scholar across the Strait to achieve this monumental feat – Huang is in a unique position to mentor the next generation of academics in this field. Research and theories in technologies quickly become dated, Huang elaborates, which poses a definite challenge not only in her field but to all academia. For those who venture into this discipline, the new Associate Dean advises students to really identify what they wish to dedicate themselves to. “People get very busy with all the information bombarded at them from the outside. But they do not have much time to really sit down and listen to themselves. In a way, I think that is a little dangerous, especially for youngsters because they, their dreams or passions, may be defined by others and not by themselves. So they cannot really experience this kind of soul searching process. Every person is very unique – only they understand their own uniqueness in terms of strengths and weaknesses.”
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PEOPLE
Ho’s childhood experience has led him to pursue an academic career in public administration and driven him to give back to his community.
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Runs in the Family Inspired by his father’s community service, Professor Alfred HO Tat-kei, CityU’s new Head of Public Policy, continues to live a life dedicated to giving back to his community
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ong Kong-born Professor Alfred Ho Tat-kei has strong ties to the city. Following his father’s example of community service, Ho has worked tirelessly to give back to his homes here and abroad. It was Ho’s humble beginnings that led him to his field of expertise. He grew up in a squatter village near Shau Kei Wan. “That area is long gone and is now known as Yiu Tung Estate. They chopped off that whole mountainside and then built new housing,” Ho says. His university studies in government and public administration took him to the United States in 1991 on a fellowship by Indiana University for his Master’s degree programme. What was to be a two-year track became a longer stint that morphed into Ho doing his PhD at the university. His time in the US was prolonged with one job offer after another until the opportunity came to return to Hong Kong this year.
Family Values The US experience provided Ho many opportunities to develop his professional and academic career. After all, his work in America earned him teaching awards at all the academic institutions
he has taught; a Best Paper Award by the American Review of Public Administration in 2015; and the Leslie A Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award in 2018 by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, a key international accreditation authority of public affairs programmes around the world. The day 17 June 2010 was even declared as the “Dr Alfred Ho Day” by the City of Indianapolis for his contribution to the city’s performance management and citizen engagement efforts. Ho’s research about budgeting systems and performance management practices while in the States also earned him an invitation to a finance forum in Guangdong in 2004. This provided Ho the opportunity to examine what Mainland China was doing in terms of budgetary reform. “My research actually has been influenced by and connected to different parts of the world,” explains Ho. “At the time, the forum was held under a new finance director with whom I exchanged ideas on performance budgeting. He later became the Guangdong provincial governor, then got promoted to Deputy Finance Minister in Beijing to work on some of those reforms. He’s currently the Minister of Finance of China.”
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PEOPLE
Ho has been invited by numerous institutions around the globe to exchange ideas on performance budgeting.
“I feel very blessed to have had this career path,” Ho shares. “What attracted me to go into this field hinged on two major factors. One was, as I mentioned, I grew up in Shau Kei Wan and my father was very active in community service and in many other local village level activities. So when I looked at what he did, how he impacted the neighbourhood, the people around him, our little village and how he made a difference, I was inspired by his public service example. “Second, when I was in my undergraduate years, I met Terry COOPER, a Fulbright professor who came from the University of Southern California. He taught an ‘Introduction to Public Administration’ course and when I took his class, it opened my eyes. I was fascinated by all the topics, from how to make decisions and manage different resources to working with citizens. It was quite a bit different from political science or politics. So I shifted my own interest and the rest was history.”
Resources for the Public Good Ho’s work now focuses on several major areas. One is e-government, the digitisation of public service, and smart cities. “I am studying
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why local governments in the US and Mainland China adopt new technologies, what are the barriers, and how they can transform public service delivery with new technologies and in more effective ways.” This work has not translated to Hong Kong yet but Ho hopes that this may soon change as he has already begun a few local projects. “Another focus is on performance-oriented budget management,” he says. “This research is about how to make sure that limited public resources are put to the best use and deliver the results citizens want, and also to try to avoid bad gaming behaviours that can emerge when you try to incentivise certain performance outcomes.” Though the professor has only been the new department head for a few months, Ho’s experience so far has been wonderful. “First of all, I have to say that my predecessors have built a very solid foundation for the programme. In the 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities our department ranked first in Asia and 27th in the world in public administration. Also, according to the 2021 QS World University Rankings by Subject, we ranked 39th in the world in social policy and administration. My first hope is that I can sustain that and continue their efforts to build with excellence, while pushing the research frontier more.”
PEOPLE
I don’t buy the idea that you just do research, teaching and service as separate circles. I try to encourage my colleagues to think in a more integrated way
Ho was invited to the 2019 International Symposium on Performance-Based Budget Management hosted by the China Development Research Foundation and provided insights into budget reforms in Mainland China.
Professor Alfred Ho Tat-kei
Towards a Richer University Life Given Ho’s personal experience, he also hopes to see more social impact by the department. The new head would like to encourage his colleagues to do more engaged research. “I don’t buy the idea that you just do research, teaching and service as separate circles. I try to encourage my colleagues to think in a more integrated way.” Because of his responsibilities as department head, Ho will not be able to teach a full class during the academic year. But already, he has put his teaching skills back to work by leading a group of students in independent study during the summer of 2021. “I initiated that because I felt that I may be too distant from students. I have been gone for so long and there are probably multiple generation or other gaps between me and young people today. I really want to learn from them and so I picked a few student leaders in my department across different years. Together this summer, we examined the purpose of competence-based education and discussed how we should re-design our department programmes with extracurricular activities to better equip students for the 21st century and offer a richer university life.”
The City of Indianapolis has declared 17 June 2010 as the “Dr Alfred Ho Day” for his contribution to the city in providing advice on performance management.
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RESEARCH
Face Masks and Cultural Identity on YouTube
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ace masks have become a necessity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While they are proven to be an effective means to limit the spread of the virus, the question of whether to mask or not to mask had been, and perhaps still is, interpreted by some individuals as evidence of “cultural” differences, or taken as an opportunity to position oneself, or certain cultures, as more “prepared” than others. The study of face masks has mostly focused on science: their effectiveness in stopping the spread of the virus and how they protect the wearer from being infected. Moreover, there have also been studies on face mask wearing from a social semiotics perspective, which investigates the kinds of meanings and values people ascribe to face masks, as well as the wearer of face masks. From this perspective, face masks are more than objects which enable the formation of a physical barrier between the wearer and the virus – they are also objects to index one’s positioning, allowing one to show alignment with, or distance from a particular position, ideology or belief. One place where the expression of such acts of positioning by individuals can be found is in YouTube videos. Dr Jenifer HO from CityU’s Department of English carried out an online observation of the YouTube videos posted between March and April 2020 and focused
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her analysis on one video which made (cultural) positioning of face masks visible by conducting a multimodal analysis of selected scenes of the video. The study found that not only is (cultural) positioning conveyed by language but it is also performed multimodally (using a combination of writing, images, sound and many other semiotic resources that people use to make meaning). For instance, in the video under analysis, the position of alignment with face mask wearing practice is shown linguistically and semiotically by means of an orchestration of spoken language, on-screen writing and sound effects. The study has implications regarding how knowledge is constructed and disseminated with the help of digital media. The affordances and the global reach of digital media enable new ways in which healthy communication can be conducted by leveraging this kind of creative and vernacular digital literacy practices. Publication and achievements Ho, W. Y. J. (2021). Face masks and cultural identity on YouTube. In R.H. Jones (Ed.), Viral Discourse. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Elements in Applied Linguistics series).
RESEARCH
To Survive, a Blockchain Game must be a Game First A
re blockchain games the future of gaming? Dr LIU Xiaofan from CityU’s Department of Media and Communication recently published an article titled CryptoKitties Transaction Network Analysis: The Rise and Fall of the First Blockchain Game Mania in Frontiers in Physics, giving his answers to this question. This is the first article in academia to analyse the entire blockchain transaction history of CryptoKitties, the first blockchain game to gain the general public’s attention. CryptoKitties went online in late November 2017 and attracted tens of thousands of players in just one month. Users can buy, breed and trade kittens (the game props) with other users. The kittens are represented by what are now called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain. The game first gained public attention when the kitten with index number “0” was traded for more than US$10,000. New players poured in as media reported this surprisingly high-value transaction, hinting at the opportunity for speculation in this blockchain game. However, many players quickly lost interest over the next month, when the number of daily active users (DAU) decreased to merely
hundreds by January 2018. Liu’s team found that the decrease of DAU happened exactly at the point that average kitten trades yielded a negative profit in the game. This finding revealed that CryptoKitties, although the most sophisticated blockchain game at the time, is arguably just a playground for speculation. The NFT and Metaverse concepts, started with a handful of digital artworks (also represented by blockchain tokens) that changed hands for millions of US dollars, have been globally trending since early 2021. Liu believes that if the NFT market is to avoid becoming another CryptoKitties game, the market makers must find a way to “keep the music playing”. That is, to keep average users happy in this market.
Publication and achievements Jiang, X-J., & Liu, X. F. (2021). CryptoKitties Transaction Network Analysis: The Rise and Fall of the First Blockchain Game Mania. Frontiers in Physics, 9, [631665]. DOI:10.3389/fphy.2021.631665
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Pandemic and the Future of Trade
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he outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has created a global, disruptive, long-lasting, and unprecedented public health crisis. However, the impact of the pandemic has moved beyond health and generated economic uncertainty and political instability. Specifically, many observers expressed concern that the pandemic will stir up protectionist sentiments in many countries and affect the public’s trade preferences worldwide. Public trade preferences are about the public’s preferences for the economic openness of a country and whether the country should be expansive on doing more trades and businesses with other countries. Yet, the impact of the pandemic on public trade preferences is unexplored and thus requires systematic empirical study to fill the gap. Dr Nick OR and Dr Edmund CHENG of CityU’s Department of Public Policy examined the pandemic impact on international trade in their recent article by assessing public attitudes toward trade in Asia during the early outbreak of the pandemic. They conducted original cross-national surveys in six key and highly integrated economies in Asia – Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand – in May 2020. The study found that most people support establishing closer trade relationships with foreign countries. Surprisingly, most people prefer to buy more domestic products than foreign products. The incongruent view is observed in all six economies, but what explains this? The study analysed the influences of pandemic-related risk perceptions, anxiety, ethnocentrism (that is, how racial or ethnic in-group evaluate out-group), and socio-economic status to provide a more nuanced understanding of the incongruent view.
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The study shows that pandemic-related risk perceptions are the key psychological drivers for the incongruent opinions on those two trade preferences. It found that the cognitive evaluation of the pandemic – when the pandemic ends – stimulated more protectionist attitudes in support of trade but has no effect on foreign product preference. The affective appraisal process – one’s worries on job and health – gives an even more pronounced difference. A higher level of affective risk perception stimulated more support for trade but attenuated the preference for buying foreign products. Anxiety, however, does not contribute to the incongruence. Overall, the study offered a nuanced framework to understand the relationship between psychological factors and public trade preferences. The framework improves the understanding of how the current pandemic affects the future of international trade and contributes to the ongoing and burgeoning research in international political economy and economic globalisation.
Publication and achievements Or, N. H. K., Cheng, E. W., Yue, R. P. H., & Yuen, S. W. H. (2021). Risk perceptions, anxiety and the future of international trade: a crossnational study of public trade preferences in Asia under COVID-19. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 31(Supplement 1), 26–40. DOI: 10.1080/17457289.2021.1924732
RESEARCH
Tongqi Stepping Out of the Shadow of Their Gay Husbands D
r Eileen TSANG Yuk-ha of CityU’s Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences recently published an article titled A “Phoenix” rising from the ashes: China’s Tongqi, marriage fraud, and resistance in British Journal of Sociology. Tongqi are a group of women who have unwittingly married gay men who are seeking to hide their sexual attraction to other men. In China, gay men rarely confess their sexual orientation. Instead, some of them trick naïve women into “marriage fraud” to fulfil their filial obligations. The number of tongqi is large: it is estimated that there are 14 million in China, making up around 3.5 per cent of all married women. Many of them suffer physical and mental distress. They report high rates of intimate partner violence, including verbal and sexual abuse. Also, they are highly exposed to sexually transmitted diseases and more susceptible to HIV infection. Viewing the relationship between the tongqi and their closeted gay husbands as a significant issue needing attention by scholars researching sociology and sexuality, Tsang has interviewed 59 tongqi in northern China. Among the interviewees, 12 were educated and 47 were low-educated. They made different choices after discovering their husbands’ identity. Of the 12 educated tongqi, nine filed for divorce, either in-court or out-of-court. However, as China’s divorce law favours men, three women filing in-court divorce ended up losing
the custody of their children. For those who chose out-of-court divorce, the divorce still caused great damage to their life. On the other hand, the majority of low-educated tongqi decided to stay in their marriage. Many of them live in rural areas and felt they did not have the means to leave their sham marriage because they have limited marketable skills. They often suffer from domestic violence and risk living with HIV. Despite the unfavourable conditions, the interviews revealed that the tongqi took action in at least three ways in the hope of starting a new life. Some filed for divorce, thereby regaining their self-respect. Those infected with AIDS tried to get treatment to stay physically healthy in order to survive, or even thrive. They also sought help and support from NGOs, which provide professional and legal advice to help them cope with the situation, and received support from online groups of those with similar experiences.
Publication and achievements Tsang, E. Y. H. (2021). A “Phoenix” rising from the ashes: China’s Tongqi, marriage fraud, and resistance. British Journal of Sociology. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12812
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EVENTS
Hong Kong Students Stand Up for Girls’ Rights CityU’s Department of Asian and International Studies organised the annual “Girls Get Equal” Youth Conference, seeking to highlight global girls’ issues and strengthen ties across university departments and with local secondary schools
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he literacy rate for girls in Pakistan is just 46%, and 12 million girls there are not registered at schools. Educational attainment for girls is held back by a number of factors, including a lack of educational resources, poor transportation, patriarchal and religious norms, and political turbulence. Children living in underprivileged countries, particularly girls, encounter significant obstacles in their lives. To encourage young people to learn about international affairs and foster a sense of global citizenship, CityU’s Department of Asian and International Studies (AIS) jointly organises the annual “Girls Get Equal” Youth Conference with Plan International Hong Kong.
The Battle for Gender Equality Now in its sixth year, the event continues to serve as a platform for local young people to meet, reflect and exchange ideas on girls’ situations in low-income countries. “We expect to see conference participants engaging with girls’ rights going forward in their capacity as citizens, researchers and activists,” notes Dr Justin ROBERTSON, Associate Professor at AIS. “These social efforts should help build
a new movement wherein girls become more powerful forces for change in their communities.” The programme recruited 44 CityU students and secondary school students. These students joined three online training workshops from January to March 2021, in which they gained an understanding of girls’ issues in developing countries and learnt desk research, public speaking and social media campaigning skills from speakers from the host organisations, representatives from social media enterprises and past participants. Facilitators were assigned to provide participants with guidance throughout the programme. Equipped with foundational knowledge, students then teamed up to investigate one of the many global girls’ issues, such as menstrual hygiene; early marriage; teen pregnancy; female genital mutilation; trafficking of girls; and the impacts of COVID-19 on girls’ rights. Then came the virtual conference held on 27 March 2021. Here, students showcased their findings and recommendations before the expert judges, their principals, teachers and parents. It commenced with opening remarks by the Chief Executive Officer of Plan International
Winners from the secondary school section took a photo with Provost of CityU, Professor Christian Wagner (sixth from left); Head of AIS, Professor Mark Thompson (seventh from left); Associate Professor of AIS, Dr Justin Robertson (second from right); and representatives from Plan International at the award presentation ceremony held on 7 May 2021.
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EVENTS
By creating an informative and visually attractive social media campaign, students from Queen Elizabeth School piqued the public’s interest in girls’ issues in Pakistan.
Hong Kong, Dr Kanie SIU, and Head of AIS, Professor Mark THOMPSON. A keynote speech by Ms Rachel KWONG, a barristerat-law, followed, inspiring youth participants to speak out in support of gender equalities and to believe in youth’s power by sharing personal stories and experiences.
Creative Projects Speak for Girls The secondary and university teams then took turns to present. The judges were impressed by their persuasive presentations and their ability to adopt critical but solution-oriented approaches in their research. The barriers to girl’s education in Pakistan described at the beginning of the article formed part of the research conducted by students from Queen Elizabeth School. They were selected as the best presentation team of the secondary school section. Their social media campaign, which made an analogy of girls’ hardship to fighting monsters in an adventure game, won them the Youth Power – Best Campaign Award, conferred by a judging panel led by Anita LAM, Head of Branding for Facebook Greater China. LIANG Anqi from Heung To Middle School was named the best presenter, and her team scooped the Creative Team Award. Meanwhile, the team arguing that periods do not stop for pandemics won the best presentation team of the university section. Apart from giving an overview of the issue, the team also suggested
that by providing girls with five reusable menstrual pads, girls will be more empowered to study and overcome the stigma of periods and the pressures exerted by conservative forces in society. GARCIA SAENZ Marina Syra, whose team worked on the topic “How Climate Change Induced Water Scarcity Affects Women Disproportionately – a Pakistan Case Study”, was declared the best presenter. The Youth Power – Best Campaign Award went to the team which created a visually appealing and informative social media campaign on how climate change can be linked to female Rohingya refugees. The Creative Team Award was given to the team that produced a video about the increasing incidents of early marriage on Indian girls under COVID-19. An award presentation was held on 7 May 2021, in which Professor Christian WAGNER, Provost of CityU, and representatives from the host organisations, presented awards to the best presentation teams and presenters. Apart from allowing participants to demonstrate their individual ability and team spirit, the programme also exemplifies interdisciplinarity by having students from eight CityU departments come together to form research teams. CityU participants also interacted closely with teams from seven secondary schools, thereby strengthening ties between the university and local secondary school students.
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EVENTS
Fostering the Professional Development of Secondary Educators Faculty members of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) shared with secondary teachers new concepts and ideas in social sciences and humanities during the University’s teachers’ development event
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eachers teach, but they must also learn continuously. Not only can they keep abreast of the rapidly-changing world and develop their professional competencies through lifelong learning, but they also serve as a role model for their students and encourage their enthusiasm for pursuing knowledge.
Programmes Catering to Teachers’ Development Needs CityU is committed to serving the community and education sectors of Hong Kong. One of its initiatives is the Teachers’ Development Day@CityU programme for secondary schools, which gives teachers up-to-date academic knowledge and shares the latest development of the University. It can help them nurture talented students and better prepare their students for future studies and careers. This year, CLASS supported the University by offering insightful sharing sessions designed for six local secondary schools via three virtual development events held in March and May 2021. The two sessions in March focused on social sciences while the one in May featured the humanities field. Dean of CLASS Professor Richard M WALKER said in his opening remarks that though these two broader areas of study approach problems differently, the faculty members at the College share similarities. In research studies, they are well-versed in traditional research methods but also embrace new technologies in their scholarly works with an open attitude. They are eager to work with experts in business, law, data science and other subjects, as well as with the community, for knowledge creation and transfer. In teaching, they are passionate about cultivating critical thinking, analytical skills and interdisciplinary perspectives in students. The speakers, Dr Dannii YEUNG of the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Dr TSUI Lik-hang of the Department
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of Chinese and History, perfectly demonstrated the research and teaching excellence of CLASS.
Introducing Technology-based Research Tools Psychology expert Dr Yeung explained to the teachers the concept of visual attention and how social scientists use eye-tracker to understand human behaviours. She detailed the backgrounds, methodologies and findings of some of her research studies. One of her studies revealed the effectiveness of various components of information posters in changing audiences’ behaviours by conducting
Social scientists use eye-trackers to understand human behaviours.
EVENTS
The sessions showed that social scientists and humanities experts also use precision instruments and computational methodologies.
the eye-tracker experiment and pre-/post-experiment survey. It provided policymakers with actionable insight on specific features to be included during the information poster development process. The teachers found this interesting and raised questions about the possible applications of the eye-tracker in classroom settings. Dr Tsui’s presentation was equally well received. Being an expert on digital humanities, he emphasised the importance of arts education for society but believes delving into weighty archives is not the only way of learning about the past. He guided the teachers through a historical journey of digital humanities and gave a glimpse of how historians use information technology to expand the scope of investigations, redefine previous conceptions and generate new ideas. For example, apart from the bibliographies of individuals in Chinese history, historians can also retrieve information about the social networks between groups of people and the social structure in a particular time or place using a digital database. He also suggested
several websites with a wealth of information on this emerging field for the teachers to explore further.
Preparing Teachers to Unleash Students’ Potential The sessions offered a fresh perspective to the teachers in both social sciences and humanities. The teachers learnt that social scientists and humanities experts, contrary to usual perception, also use precision instruments and computational methodologies to analyse a vast breadth of social phenomena and have made remarkable achievements. The professional development sessions were found to be inspiring and eye-opening and elicited a lot of positive feedback in the post-event survey. It is hoped that the teachers would bring home new knowledge, perspectives, and insights to share with their students after having intellectual exchanges with different subject experts during the events.
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SOCIAL IMPACT
Throughout his academic career, Ho has been working to promote the application of the hope theory in coping with life obstacles.
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SOCIAL IMPACT
Looking for Hope to Help Patients Cope with Life Altering Situations The road looks tough for those facing a terminal diagnosis, incarceration or even a global pandemic, but there is help in the form that Professor Samuel HO, Head of CityU’s Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, advocates, which guides them with hope-based treatments that focus on the future
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ope-based research is not a new concept in clinical psychology, but it was not practised widely in Asia when Professor Samuel HO introduced it to Hong Kong in the early 2000s. The famous American psychologist Professor Rick SNYDER was the first to coin the term “hope theory” in psychology and his work has since received widespread traction in practice and has been adopted by other clinical psychologists. Snyder’s theory became a pivotal part of Ho’s work in traumatology and resilience – an area the CityU psychology professor has dedicated his entire career to. Ho’s area of expertise leans toward developing in-depth knowledge about factors that facilitate adjustments to lifethreatening illnesses, such as cancer, and traumatic events like the COVID-19 epidemic.
Treating Symptoms or the Root? “Clinical psychologists focus mainly on symptoms, which are ‘the negative things’ that require a lot of problem-solving,” says Ho. “The usual way to help patients cope with a problem is to improve their problem-solving skills.” Whereas the usual practice on symptom treatments focuses on the “now”, hope-based treatments focus on the future. Hope in this context does not refer to a religious belief but rather a cognitive
disposition based on setting goals, identifying ways to reach those goals and the rewards for achieving them.
The Beginning Ho started out as a clinical psychologist at the Children’s Cancer Foundation and learnt from his patients, their parents and caregivers on how to cope with very difficult situations. He obtained his PhD in Australia where he also worked in the bone marrow transplantation ward in the Royal Melbourne Hospital. After his time down under, Ho returned to Hong Kong as a faculty member in psychology. Part of his job entailed inviting speakers to his classes. This was where Snyder’s hope study was first introduced by the doctor himself. “Frankly, at that time I wasn’t very impressed with his presentation. I suppose I was confused about his concept of hope and its contrast with our problem-solving kind of intervention. Later though, when I went to the US and attended the American Psychological Association annual conference and encountered Snyder again, we sat down and had a long and very meaningful conversation.” It was widely known in professional circles that Snyder suffered from a consistent chest pain himself. “But he continued to function very well despite his adversity and pain, and that was how he
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SOCIAL IMPACT
Even under very difficult circumstances when we explore different topics, including the topic of hope, they [people with very difficult situations] are the ones who have taught me how to cope with some extremely hopeless situations Professor Samuel Ho
explained to me his concept of hope and how he used it to cope with his chronic illness.” It was a moment of revelation for Ho. “In essence, when people encounter a difficulty, they think about how to solve the current problem. Which presents the problem that at that time, few people think about what they can do after the difficulty – and that is the whole base of future-oriented treatments,” Ho explains. “This was a new concept to me and to many practitioners and patients in Asia.” It was after this that Ho came up with the 12-item Adult Trait Hope Scale, which is rated on the basis of an 8-point Likert scale (1 = definitely false to 8 = definitely true) used to measure hope according to the model of Snyder et al. Ho’s Chinese Hope Scale has been adopted by medical doctors, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists and other allied health professionals in some major hospitals in Hong Kong.
Theory in Practice The introduction of Snyder’s hope theory opened new doors for Ho. He received a call one day from a doctor at the Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam. “They were setting up a genetic colon cancer database. This was new at the time.” The surgeon MD wanted to involve a psychologist in the team and Ho helped implement the concept of hope intervention into this collaboration.
Ho’s hope-based research and treatments also work with carers, going above and beyond just the patients and clinicians.
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SOCIAL IMPACT
Ho worked with clinical psychologists and social workers from various organisations to develop storybooks about hope and hope-based intervention protocol for children with cancer and special needs.
The subsequent research touched on the efficacy of hope-based treatments and examined people’s motivation once they receive news of a potential debilitating disease. “The major finding is that some people’s first reaction is resignation. People do self-evaluation about the pros and cons to make further decisions. In that way, we help them with the pros and cons and change their mindset. Some people are already open about engaging in challenging procedures because they already have a future-oriented mentality. They think, ‘If I get results, I can do something to help myself and my family members’.” Ho’s research drew the attention of Hong Kong Correctional Services Department and its team of psychologists who approached the professor with the aim of establishing a novel gender-responsive treatment facility for women offenders. Together with Ho, they came up with a Psychological Gymnasium. This psychological gym differs from the traditional one-onone or group therapy treatment. Emphasis is put on cognitive behavioural activities such as art therapy and drawing classes and is hence different from the law mode correctional setting. His research improved the model of rehabilitation in correctional settings in Hong Kong and Asia.
Beyond the Immediate Circle Ho’s hope-based research and treatments also work with carers, going above and beyond just the patients and clinicians. “For the carers, they are also subjected to very difficult situations. Generally speaking, the cause of hope is also applicable to them.” The psychologist shares the case of a secondary school student in Taiwan who was diagnosed with a terminal illness. “The girl in question
has almost completely given up on life, however the parents knew that undergoing treatment is very important. So they forced the child to comply with the medical treatment. As part of our hope-based goal-oriented approach, we found out that for the patient there was only one thing she wanted: to return to school to spend one day with her friends.” Ho spoke to the oncologist, the parents and the school administrators to come up with a goal that if the patient complied with the medical treatment and her condition improved, they would help her go back to school for a day. Having incentives in place is important, Ho adds. “We start off with setting up a few strategies in order to achieve the goal.” In this particular case, that included establishing communication between the patient and her peers at school through a messaging app. Eventually, the girl had her day at school. Ho credits the patients, the caregivers as well as the academic environment for giving him a multidisciplinary setting that has helped him understand the different approaches and concepts in his work. “The most challenging part is that I encounter people with very, very difficult situations,” Ho shares. “People who have severe disfigurement, people with terminal illness, people with life sentences. So, even under very difficult circumstances when we explore different topics, including the topic of hope, they are the ones who have taught me how to cope with some extremely hopeless situations. The hope approach works, and through it is how I am able to assist as many as I have over the course of my career.”
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TEACHING & LEARNING
Students Build Impressive Event Planner Portfolio through Big Project Some 40 cultural heritage students of CityU’s Department of Chinese and History (CAH) were challenged to work as one team to organise an online arts festival with around 20 programmes
The festival featured close to 20 music, dance, Chinese opera and drama programmes.
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f you have ever watched a reality television series like MasterChef, you will have noticed that quarrels are almost inevitable in group competitions—even if the group size is only two. Can you imagine a group of around 40 people working together on the same project? This scenario was tested as students of the Cultural Heritage stream of CAH curated Performing Our City: Mask ON-Theatre, an online arts festival held from 1 to 16 April 2021 to introduce local artists to the public and explain the difficulties they have faced during the pandemic.
Teamwork Ability Tested Close to 20 music, dance, Chinese opera and drama programmes were presented online. The music programmes featured “Voices in the City”, a three-episode series that recorded the stories of six local musicians and music groups, and the showing of two archives about Chinese popular and classical music. The highlights of the Chinese opera programmes were the sharing, performance and workshop by the Department’s alumna and
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an emerging Chinese opera actress LEUNG Fei-tung, and interviews with veteran Chinese opera practitioners. The drama programmes included a live sharing session and a twoepisode audio drama, “20 40”. The performances and demonstration lectures by Heiman HO, a representative of the Hong Kong Dance Sports Elite team, and Emily WONG and Vanessa LUNG, two award-winning Chinese dance performers, formed the core of the dance programmes. While organising a performing arts event was the decision of CAH’s senior tutor Dr Marianne WONG and instructor WONG King-chung, course coordinators of the Festival and Cultural Events Management and Advanced Management for Cultural Professionals courses, it was the courses’ Year 3 and 4 students who were the driving force of the festival. They were divided into teams responsible for the programmes of one of the four art forms, or supportive works such as social media promotion; webpage building and documentation; design and printing; and media relations. Four students took up festival coordinator roles to oversee the entire event. •
TEACHING & LEARNING
All Started from Scratch The students worked through all the steps required in cultural event planning including defining objectives; drafting proposals; soliciting sponsorship; drawing up a budget; inviting and liaising with performers; scheduling various programmes; promoting the event through social media; handling technical issues and media enquiries; and so on. “A major aim of the Cultural Heritage stream is to prepare students for careers in the cultural field… Students are expected to put the theories they have learnt into practice,” Dr Wong says. Though the teachers were always ready to lend a helping hand, the students had to proactively solve any problems they encountered. Emily CHAN Ying-tung, one of the festival coordinators, believes the experience resembled an actual workplace scenario. The teachers were like supervisors, and the junior members had to give their best to meet their expectations.
Communications and Compromise are Gold The fact that students could not meet in person added difficulties to an already demanding task. They had to resort to online tools for discussions. Arguments were unavoidable. Fortunately, the CityU courses the students had taken before equipped them with a solid knowledge foundation and the soft skills necessary for tackling these challenges.
Leung Fei-tung, the Department’s alumna, shows how she puts on make-up for a Chinese opera performance.
Yet, they had to be humble and flexible when dealing with others too. “I had to adjust my mindset and attitude,” Chan shares. “Being more patient and considerate towards each other, more active in expressing and exchanging ideas, and being more responsible when requesting help are keys to overcoming barriers.”
Evaluating Successes, Challenges and Lessons Learnt Professor CHING May-bo, Head of CAH, says that she was proud to see students doing their best to put on an online event and show their respect for local artists. The course coordinators also commended the students for their hard work and creativity. They appreciated their efforts in using academic knowledge, connections with the performers and social platforms to meet their aims. “But there is always room for improvement,” cautions Dr Wong. “During the last lesson, we had a post-event evaluation. Students all agreed they need to improve their communication, time management and risk management skills.” Chan concurs and reveals that communicating with different parties posed the biggest challenge. But overall, she found the experience valuable and thinks it could help her build the skills she requires for her future career. Chan will also never forget the experience of working alongside passionate young artists, and when she and her teammates burst into laughter when they made silly mistakes during the recording of the opening ceremony in front of the camera. All these vivid memories have made her university life unforgettable.
Browse the festival’s website to view the performances and programme notes.
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TEACHING & LEARNING
Pang advocates using innovative pedagogies in teaching and learning wherever appropriate.
VR Experience Helps with First-Person Perspectives An award-winning project utilises VR technology to help provide students with immersive experiences that aid them in their writing
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ne of the winners of the Innovative CityU-Learning Awards Semester B, 2020-2021 was Tiffany PANG, who earned the prize for her work “VR in Everyday Language Classroom: A Practical Approach to Language Learning in a Digital Environment”. This project immersed English for humanities and social sciences students in a computer-generated world via Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. They then turned their experiences into a narrative before presenting this work to the class.
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The Awards, introduced since the University’s implementation of CityU-Learning, aim to recognise innovative approaches implemented towards enhancing the quality of online and/or hybrid learning at CityU.
First-Person Problems Pang is Instructor II at Chan Feng Men-ling Chan Shuk-Lin Language Centre (Language Centre) under CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Her VR headsets utilised pre-recorded videos, often
TEACHING & LEARNING
If you don’t keep trying out new innovative approaches you will lag behind Tiffany Pang
sourced from YouTube, to help students experience first-person perspectives and how personal observations affect their writing. Drawing an example from one exercise, Pang says, “I showed students a video of a haunted building. They watched the video through the VR headset, which gives the impression as if they were there in person. Afterwards, they wrote a story in first person based on their viewing.” Pang implemented this approach after witnessing the difficulty some students experienced in her class. “I realised that certain
The VR experience is just a catalyst for the collaborative writing activity that comes afterwards.
students sometimes find it quite hard to imagine a story because they never experienced it themselves. If I say, ‘you are now in the hospital testing positive for the Coronavirus’, they have difficulty writing a narrative in first person based on that because they have never experienced it. How can they write the story properly then? This is why I came up with the idea of using VR technology within the language classroom.” Although they cannot interact with things inside the video environment, at the very least they can have an immersive experience, Pang explains, and get the feeling of a first-person perspective. Another consideration the language instructor has for her students is that the tool must be easy to use and that it can be easily applied in the language classroom. “In the CityU library, there is a place called Discovery Corner where there is a professional VR device for students to try out. It has been there for, I think, four to five years but few people seem to be interested in trying it. I think it’s because the machine is complicated and highly technical,” Pang recollects. This aided her in thinking of ways to procure affordable VR headsets. “For a few bucks, we can supply a wide range of students.” The result is an uptake of students being able to do their assignments with promising results after using the VR tool. “When I applied for the award, I did not just mention the VR technology,” Pang elaborates. “I also mentioned the collaborative writing activity that comes after the VR activity because the learning process is not just about the VR experience, it is a catalyst for what comes after – which is using the experience to collaboratively write a story from the first-person perspective.”
The Next Step: Content Creation Having received the award, Pang hopes to persuade her colleagues to use VR learning in their own teaching. Innovation, after all, is an important part of CityU’s agenda. “If you don’t keep trying out new innovative approaches you will lag behind,” Pang says before adding, “CityU’s Language Centre has a supportive environment. The overall teaching and learning atmosphere is quite positive in the sense that we have a lot of sharing sessions and activities for the teachers to communicate their teaching ideas. We get together and try to come up with new pedagogies that can help our students learn.” Pang intends to further develop VR pedagogy into something more student-centred, she divulges. “Right now, I use videos on YouTube. I can choose from a pool of VR videos but I don’t only want to choose, I want to create and invite my students to create videos too.” The next step is to ask students to produce their own VR videos by using VR cameras that Pang intends to acquire using the grant for winning the award. These videos will, in turn, be utilised in language lessons where they can be viewed by classmates to further help collaborate on writing projects.
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STUDENTS & ALUMNI
Never Stop Learning CityU alumni and current Pricerite Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Ben LAM extols the benefits of the University’s courses and advises young students on what they need to do to achieve success
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ityU alumni Ben Lam did not emerge from the traditional academic business stream. Instead, Lam studied East and Southeast Asian Studies (currently the Asian and International Studies programme under CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, CLASS), pursuing a longstanding interest in the region. Learning Korean and Japanese, however, proved advantageous when it came to business. Lam helped Japanese casual wear retail giant Uniqlo open its first office in the city. In fact, he was the company’s first Hong Kong employee on the ground, and he headed Uniqlo’s brand awareness campaign as store manager. From there on, his career was set. In 2008, he went on to expand the business for Uniqlo in the rest of Southeast Asia and Taiwan with a focus on training staff and implementing best practice guidelines. Eventually, Lam was given the responsibility to look after Uniqlo’s entire operations in Hong Kong. When he was first appointed, Lam became the first non-Japanese store manager of one of Uniqlo’s 10 flagship stores around the world. As the sole member at Uniqlo to have in-depth understanding of Japanese culture while speaking the language, Lam became the bridge between Japanese management and the local team he led. He perfected the language during his undergraduate years when went on exchange programmes between CityU and a university located in Beppu, Japan. It gave Lam a unique deep dive into Japanese culture, an experience that gave him an edge over his peers. After several years, Lam was tasked to launch the brand’s sister company in the city, GU, another extremely popular brand in Japan.
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I graduated during SARS. So I understand the sentiment of graduates during COVID-19 very well. You start questioning what your future holds Ben Lam
STUDENTS & ALUMNI
A key to success for Lam is to reach out for opportunities proactively.
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STUDENTS & ALUMNI
Lam displays a Chinese calligraphy piece by his teacher, and famous calligrapher, Cheng Siu-lun, in a prominent place in his office, to remind himself to strive for self-improvement all the time.
Coming Home Despite his success, the young operations manager decided to elevate his professional track further, he would need to upskill. Lam returned to CityU to pursue an EMBA degree to sharpen his business acumen. He was subsequently brought on board at Pricerite as their new Head of Operations. It only took three months for the company to acknowledge Lam’s value before they promoted him to Chief Operating Officer in Hong Kong, and another six months before, at the start of 2021, Lam also became the Executive Director. However, nothing gets done without having self-belief in the first place. The story of his proactive approach to Uniqlo has made the rounds as a testament to his tenacity, though to Lam it was not anything special.
Seize Opportunities “When you are young, you need to try everything,” Lam says. “I graduated in the year SARS was ravaging the city – not unlike what COVID-19 is doing now. So I understand the sentiment of graduates in recent times very well. You start questioning what your future holds.” In his days, Lam asked many of his seniors at university for advice and perspective. “Many of them went into the media or became a copywriter, and these were the areas I wanted to go into but eventually didn’t. One of their advice was to put yourself out there even if they aren’t hiring. Send your CV or put a presentation together. Stand out.” Having worked the market for almost two decades, Lam says fresh graduates who show enthusiasm and a proactive attitude in job hunting are rare. “Graduates often lack confidence because of their inexperience. In a job market where everyone is shy, try to show
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initiative – whether the hiring manager chooses you or not. There will always be people out there who appreciate that kind of passion.” “When I graduated, the hiring manager at Uniqlo hadn’t even started his recruitment but I was there first. I stepped up. He didn’t even know he needed someone but there was someone who was saying ‘hey, I’m ready’. And for him it was a ‘why not?’ moment, and he gave me a chance.”
The Value of New Experiences The COO also recounted his two cultural exchanges during his university years at CLASS, which turned out to be a great booster. He was leading one of the exchanges to the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Beppu, Oita, Japan, with over a dozen students and two lecturers. “These days, it takes a student four years to graduate whereas in my time it took three. In my opinion, it is best for them to try other experiences other than just to go to school,” Lam advises. “Every academic year, try something – be it work experience, student exchanges, traineeship – that you think could be significant or a part of your future career. Try out different companies.” For himself, before joining Uniqlo, Lam worked in an e-commerce company fulltime for a year. This was a part-time job he obtained during his university years. “It is important to try out different work environments and company cultures,” Lam concludes. “If you do it right, there are several things to be gained. First, you will cultivate your own network of contacts. Second, it helps you acquire social skills, which a lot of fresh graduates lack. Third, there is the potential experience of failure. These experiences garnered in your youth can definitely help you succeed in the future.”
City University of Hong Kong Columbia University JOINT BAC HELOR’S DEGREE PROGRAM
+ +FACT fact
A Brand New College Experience The Joint Bachelor’s Degree Program between City University of Hong Kong and Columbia University offers students an international undergraduate educational experience – a program spanning two continents, in cosmopolitan cities that allow students to engage directly with the world around them. The Joint Bachelor’s Degree Program began to accept CLASS students in 2015.
Eligible majors • Asian and International Studies • Criminology and Sociology (applicable to the Applied Sociology stream)
• Linguistics and Language Applications • Psychology • Public Policy and Politics (applicable to the Politics stream)
To learn more about the Joint Bachelor’s Degree Program, visit cityu-hk.gs.columbia.edu
NEWS
Although it was a hard decision to move from a physical event to a virtual one, the conference was a huge success.
Virtual Conference Provides Linguistic Insights C
omprising of faculty members of CityU’s Department of English, the local organising committee of the sixth International Conference of the Asia-Pacific Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) and Professional Communication Association had made an all-out effort to make the conference happened amid the continuing pandemic. Themed “Multimodality and Beyond: Addressing Complexity and Emerging Needs in LSP”, it eventually held online from 3 to 5 June 2021. The advance in technologies has impacted the study of Languages for Specific Purposes and Professional Communication. The use of technology and digital media has led to the development of academic and professional practices that are multimodal, plurilingual and often seek to engage diversified audiences, and widened the perspectives of the study of the field. The conference, held in collaboration with the International Society of Gesture Studies – Hong Kong, aimed to develop a high resolution picture of how the field is dealing with scientific and technological advances. The three-day event featured five plenary lectures and handson workshops delivered by internationally renowned scholars, three invited panels, and numerous parallel sessions. The topics and speakers of the plenary lectures were “Defining the Elusive ‘Digital Genre’
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and Contemplating Implications for LSP Research and Pedagogy” by Professor Diane BELCHER; “Multimodality and Beyond” by Professor Kay O’HALLORAN; “What Surprises Academic Writers: a Diachronic Perspective” by Professor HU Guangwei; “The Emergence of Conceptual Actions” by Professor Jürgen STREECK; and “Rethinking LSP, Academic Language and Professional Communication from a Translanguaging Perspective” by Professor LI Wei. These speakers also guided pre-registered participants through understanding and applying different practices and pedagogical approaches in the workshops. Three invited panels, each allowed in-depth discussions among four to six scholars, were also arranged. CityU’s Associate Professor Dr Christoph HAFNER was the convenor of the panel “Specialised Genres Online”, while Professor Sue STARFIELD and Dr Renia LOPEZ convened the panels “English for Research Publication Purposes” and “Gesture in Teaching and Learning”, respectively. There were also close to 150 paper/poster presentations by presenters from all over the world during the parallel sessions. Starting from the hard decision to change from a physical event to a virtual one, the conference turned out to be a huge success. It has been an excellent opportunity for scholars specialising in LSP and Professional Communication to gather for intellectual exchange.
NEWS
Grant Secured for Scholars to Explore How People Live with Endemic Diseases T
he COVID-19 situation seems to be getting better, but unfortunately, experts say it may become endemic and never go away. Moreover, chances are that other diseases will emerge in future. Exploring solutions that can help mitigate the health, social, economic, environmental and other impacts of COVID-19 and other novel infectious diseases is crucial. This is what the HK$150 million funding under the One-off Collaborative Research Fund Coronavirus Disease and Novel Infectious Disease Exercise 2020/21, administrated by Research Grants Council (RGC), is intended for. Three projects of which faculty members of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) serve as Co-Principal Investigators have received over HK$11.6 million of grants under this exercise. The project teams are going to pursue interdisciplinary research across universities to enhance the level of attainment, quantity, dimensions and speed of research outputs. Public Policy Professor Linda LI Che-lan serves as Co-Principal Investigator of the project “Hong Kong Insolvency and Experts in Restructuring Law and Policy in Times of COVID-19 and Beyond”. It seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the current insolvency and restructuring laws in rescuing otherwise economically viable businesses. It involves experts in political science, laws, accounting, finance and business from CityU and the University of Hong Kong. Media and Communication Chair Professor Christine HUANG Yihui and Assistant Professor Dr HUANG Guanxiong are the Co-Principal Investigators of the project “(Mis)communication, Trust and Information Environments: A Comparative Study of the COVID-19 ‘Infodemics’ in Four Chinese Societies”. Working with scholars from two other local universities, the project team will examine the emergence and spread of false and misleading information about the COVID-19 pandemic on digital media in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
Many older adults suffer from loneliness due to social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The same may happen again during future health crises. The project “Protecting Older People from Loneliness during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Other Novel Infectious Disease Pandemic”, of which Social and Behavioural Sciences Associate Professor Dr Dannii YEUNG serves as Co-Principal Investigator, will examine two interventions aimed at reducing loneliness among older adults together with scholars from two other universities. CLASS is committed to conducting high-standing interdisciplinary research studies on various humanities and social sciences issues. The research output is expected to contribute to knowledge building and transfer, and to the betterment of society.
Studying the lessons learnt from COVID-19 is crucial for humankind to handle any future health crisis.
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NEWS
CLASS faculty members are dedicated to transmitting knowledge for society's advancement.
Recognising Knowledge Transfer Efforts T
he aim of conducting research is to create new knowledge. But new knowledge has to be transmitted to society through teaching, publications, media channels, collaborations and other means to bring advantages to the public. To honour faculty members whose projects demonstrate clear evidence of innovation, engagement or impact on the community, CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) gives out Knowledge Transfer Awards annually. This year, Dr Esther CHOW Oi-wah of the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences scooped the top award. Entitled “Rethinking and Shaping Knowledge and Practice on Aging: Forging Close Ties among Universities, Industries and the Wider Public”, Chow’s knowledge transfer initiative was a textbook example of translating research into practice. Under the big umbrella, three projects were designed based on research studies describing the blended approach for social work learning, the use of storytelling in enhancing teaching and learning of human behaviour and social environment/diversity, and engaging the younger generation in playback practice. The outcome of the first project was 15 sets of e-learning materials for different social work courses. In the second project, a group of older storytellers were invited to share their life challenges, which were then
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performed by 10 students in the Playback Theatre attended by social workers, elderly, students and members of the public. The third project saw students using Playback Theatre to embrace diversity of local and non-local university communities, thereby cultivating diversity across culture and age. These projects were successful in developing a pedagogical model for young learners and enriching students’ learning beyond the classroom interactively with older adults. Besides current students, health and social care practitioners, older adults and the general public had also benefited. Meanwhile, Dr TSUI Lik-hang of the Department of Chinese and History and Professor Diane PECORARI of the Department of English were named the merit winners. Tsui and his team compiled a ChineseEnglish Chinese history glossary with over 2,430 terms to help nonChinese speaking students with limited Chinese history and cultural background overcome language barriers in studying the subject. Pecorari led a project team to investigate the specific ways of speaking, writing and communicating in English used in the specialised disciplinary communities and develop pedagogical approaches and multimodal teaching and learning materials. Though designed for CityU students in the first place, these materials have broad applicability and are already in use globally.
NEWS
Newly Launched Student Chapter with Big Idea U
niversity life should not be limited to attending lectures, completing assignments and getting good grades. It is also the time for students to broaden their horizons, gain various experiences, and expand their social network. Working towards achieving these objectives side by side with peers can make one more motivated and feel encouraged. The Student Chapter of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) is born in this context. Consisting of students from all seven CLASS departments, it endeavours to build a strong network to connect with fellow students in the College and offer an array of educational opportunities for students to learn together, share knowledge and cultivate ideas. “I was very delighted that we have a group of enthusiastic students who are the core members of our Student Chapter,” said Dean of CLASS Professor Richard M WALKER during the inauguration of the CLASS Student Chapter, held on 1 June 2021. “They display strong commitment to serve our student community, to strengthen the cohesiveness and sense of belonging of students with CLASS and the University.” The establishment of this new networking platform was also witnessed by Vice-President (Student Affairs) Professor Raymond CHAN, who presented a pin with the emblem of the CLASS Student
Chapter to the core leadership team, and other CLASS faculty members, staff and students. The very first activity was a workshop about handling stress when applying for an internship. It offered students advice on setting internship goals, choosing the most suitable company, and equipping themselves with essential soft skills. It perfectly demonstrated the missions—and ambitions—of the founding members: instead of focusing on scholarly activities or merely serving as an “entertainment club”, they strive to offer diverse experience and all-round support to the younger members of the CLASS community. “We are determined to forge belonging and growth in members of our student community with our work, to engage in conversations, and to foster a close relationship among CLASS students,” said Raven CHAN, the chairperson of the Student Chapter. Some upcoming activities include a “CityU Go Grow Goal” project to encourage active participation in student activities and Zentangle art jamming sessions on mental wellbeing.
Stay tuned for updates and enrol in various activities at the CLASS Student Chapter webpage.
Vice-President (Student Affairs) Professor Raymond Chan (5th from left of the back row) joins Dean of CLASS Professor Richard M Walker (middle of the back row) and faculty and staff of the College in celebrating the inauguration of the Student Chapter.
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Dean: Director of Administration: Production:
Professor Richard M WALKER Dr Hermia CHIU Po-hing College Publicity Team
CITY CLASS connects the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) with our stakeholders. The magazine offers a snapshot of CLASS events and achievements in areas such as teaching, research, knowledge transfer, student activities, learning experiences, and university life. It aims at providing readers with insights into the College’s commitment to quality education and research.
Online version is available on www.cityu.edu.hk/class/magazine
To subscribe to the magazine, please send an email to: ch.publicity@cityu.edu.hk ©2021 College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong Facebook: www.facebook.com/CLASS.CityU