Research
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The Faculty of Arts is internationally regarded for its cutting edge research across the range of its subject areas. Its reputation is built on innovation and collaboration, bringing together researchers spanning several disciplines to pioneer new research trends in the Arts and Humanities. There is a strong vision for developing successful interdisciplinary research, and a commitment to ensuring that our research effectively informs our own teaching as well as a wider process of knowledge exchange in close partnership with a range of stakeholders. Our research strives to understand the changing nature of local and global values, processes and challenges in their social cultural, economic and historical contexts.
It is one of the Faculty’s stated missions to serve as an international gateway and forum for humanistic scholarship between China and the rest of the world. The Faculty’s themes of China-West Studies and Language & Communication, along with the Emerging Strategic Research Theme of Law, Literature, Language, embrace the research activities of most Faculty scholars and inform their teaching.
For details of Knowledge Exchange projects undertaken by members of the Faculty, please visit: http://arts.hku.hk/knowledge-exchange/ke-impact-projects.
Recent research initiatives in the School span traditional and modern Chinese literature and history (particularly Ming and Qing studies), gender and sexuality in Chinese culture, Chinese women’s studies, Sinophone literature, ancient and modern Chinese philology, Chinese-English translation and its theories, ancient Chinese philosophy, cross-cultural communication in science, religions in Chinese history, learning Chinese language online and via mobile applications, and Chinese language pedagogy.
Research has a wide remit. Specialities include modern and post-colonial literary studies, cross-cultural writing, law, language and literature, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, integrational linguistics, English historical linguistics, and World Englishes research.
School of Humanities
The School of Humanities is devoted to critical and creative thought through the study of what makes us uniquely human. The School comprises six distinct departments: Comparative Literature, Art History, History, Linguistics, Music and Philosophy.
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
The School is home to six area studies programmes, African Studies, American Studies, China Studies, European Studies, Japanese Studies and Korean Studies, as well as the Global Creative Industries programme. It also offers programmes in Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Thai.
Centre for Applied English Studies
Although teaching is the main work of the Centre, its teachers also engage in research. Areas of expertise include English for academic/professional purposes, autonomous language learning, sociolinguistics and discourse.
The Centre has a team of renowned Buddhist scholars from around the world who have produced research on such topics as Buddhism and recovery from drug dependence, integration of Buddhist teachings into the secondary school curriculum, traditional Chinese ethics and religious studies, and the effect of Buddhism practice on emotion functioning.