Insights on Indigenous Ainu

Professor Edwin Michielsen, who joined HKU’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures as an Assistant Professor specialising in modern Japanese literature in July 2022, was given opportunities last year when he received two fellowships to further his research project...

A Guide to Tourism in Hong Kong

Hong Kong as a travel destination has been many things to many people over the decades. For Western visitors in the 1930s, it was a beach and recreation stop on a round-the-world voyage by sea. After the Second World War, its ‘oriental-ness’ and Chinese culture...

Skin and Bones

When Dr Michael BC Rivera was 13 years old, he was captivated by the American television show Bones, about a forensic anthropologist who uses her skills to solve mysteries. Dr Rivera wanted to do the same thing, but in Hong Kong, where he grew up, there were no...

An Historian Who Looks to the Future

Dr Javier Cha is an unlikely combination of Korean medievalist and digital historian, two seemingly unrelated subjects that were brought together by the fact that his medieval research had too much data for one person to comfortably compute on his own. Starting 15...

Modern Families in Turbulent China

The breakdown of order in the early 20th century in China placed many people in an uncertain position. The scholarly class lost relevance as the civil service examinations for mandarins were abolished. Foreign imperialism weakened the state, but also opened up...