Faculty of Arts Students Recognized by The Undergraduate Awards 2015

Three students from the Faculty of Arts have had their papers “highly commended” by The Undergraduate Awards 2015. The Awards, first established in 2009, aim to celebrate and support the world’s brightest and most innovative undergraduate students by recognising their best coursework and projects. This year’s awardees were selected from among 5,117 submissions from students in 255 universities across 39 countries.

Ms Guan Zheng, a final-year History major in 2014-2015, was recognized for her paper, entitled “Student Movements in Wartime China, 1937-1949”, which she wrote for the capstone course HIST3028. History Without Borders. The course, which is targeted at students who want to prepare for postgraduate work, invites the brightest students to submit a proposal for a field project and pairs them with a supervisor. Ms Guan, who was supervised by Dr Peter Cunich and Dr David Pomfret, is about to start a master’s degree at the University of Oxford.

Two final-year English Studies majors in 2014-2015, Ms Helena Hu Pan and Ms Jacqueline Leung, were also highly commended for their papers in the Literature 1710-Present category. Ms Hu, who is currently applying for graduate programs in 19th and 20th Century Literature, was recognized for her paper, entitled “Heart of Darkness and the Imperial Psyche”, which she worked on during her 2014 summer semester at Cambridge (Pembroke-King's Programme) with a doctoral candidate from Trinity College. Ms Leung, who was supervised by Dr Otto Heim from the School of English, was recognized for her paper, entitled “Eradicating Categories: The Gothic and the Flux of Identity in Asian-American Narratives”. Ms Leung will be starting a Master's in English Literature at University College London this October.

Highly Commended Entrants are students whose papers have made it into to the top 10% of all submissions in their particular field. They are shortlisted for the award of overall “Winner” – the top performers in each of the Undergraduate Awards’ 25 categories – to be announced on September 23, and are given the opportunity to attend the Undergraduate Awards Global Summit in November, a three-day long networking and brainstorming event which brings together students from all over the world. (http://www.undergraduateawards.com/)

For media enquiries, please contact Mr Cyrus Chan, Events Coordinator, Faculty of Arts (tel: 3917 4984 email: cyrusc@hku.hk).