RECENT FOCUS

The 28th Congregation (Faculty of Humanities) was held successfully on 5 November 2022 in a hybrid mode. It was kicked off with opening remarks from the Faculty Dean Prof. LI Ping. This year, we are honoured to have two Guests of Honour, Ir Dr CHAN Fuk Cheung, BBS, Former General Manager of CLP Engineering Limited and Outstanding PolyU Alumni 2013 in the First Session and Mr KWAN Chuk-fai, MH, JP, Professor of Practice of Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and Chairman of The Community Investment and Inclusion Fund, Home and Youth Affairs Bureau, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the Second Session, to give the Congratulatory Address.

A total of 909 students graduated this year, including 736 students receiving postgraduate degrees and 173 students receiving bachelor’s degrees.

Congratulations to the class of 2022!

The online course “Humanities in Focus", created by top scholars within the Faculty of Humanities, offers an in-depth exploration of various subjects within the humanities and how they can help answer the big questions we face in our world today. Learners will engage in ongoing conversations about social issues in film, challenges and opportunities in art, experience and consciousness in history, and the power of language. This type of humanistic inquiry will allow learners to uncover the many insights that draw from the topics in this course, and more importantly to reflect on the fundamental question: Why does humanities matter? Registration is now open at https://www.edx.org/course/Humanities-in-Focus.

The Department of Chinese Culture, in collaboration with the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, launched an online program of Chinese Culture. The vibrant program is composed of 3 MOOC courses with 15 fascinating topics delivered by FH experts. The topics touch on Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Sunzi, food and cuisine, politics, strategic thinking, literature, paintings, operas, education, and the history of China’s cultural exchanges with other countries and regions.

Prof. William Shiyuan WANG, Chair Professor of Language and Cognitive Sciences, and Dr Manson Cheuk Man FONG, Research Assistant Professor, of the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, delivered a Research Grants Council Public Lecture entitled “A Journey into Language: Evolution, Cognition, and Neuroscience” at the Hong Kong Science Museum on 12 November 2022. Prof. WANG and Dr FONG talked about the evolutionary history of human beings that has made language possible, the cognitive and neural bases of language, the brain changes in normal and pathological ageing, and how they impact our language functions. Along the way, the speakers also shared their related ongoing research projects on brain age estimation, language comprehension, foreign language learning, etc.

The Research Grants Council (RGC) has been organising regular public lectures to introduce to the public the achievements of the Hong Kong higher education sector, and let the community know about the importance and values of the work of our researchers.

Please click here to review the lecture in Cantonese.

Following the success last year, the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies (CBS) was invited to participate in the Gerontech and Innovation Expo cum Summit (GIES), the largest gerontechnology public education event in Hong Kong, again on 2-5 November 2022. During the 4-day exhibition, the Speech Therapy team illustrated the application of the ultrasound imaging technology in the assessment and treatment of dysphagia to policymakers, stakeholders of rehabilitation service sector and the general public. A total of 23,000 visits was recorded in GIES this year.

Dr Elaine KWONG, Assistant Professor of CBS, has been funded by the Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF) on the project “The temporal profiles of swallowing events in healthy adults: a pilot study using ultrasound imaging”. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration with Prof. Yong-Ping ZHENG of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). It aims to obtain some normative ultrasonographic data from healthy individuals and lay the groundwork for swallowing examination in individuals with swallowing disorders. It is hoped that ultrasound can be applied clinically as an alternative imaging tool for swallowing assessments in the future.

Dr FENG Yan, the PhD graduate of CBS in 2022, has been awarded the 2022 LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award under the category of PhD thesis. The award was offered by LSHK 香港語言學學會 The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong to encourage young scholars at local tertiary education institutions to conduct linguistics research.
The LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award recognises the outstanding theses which contribute to any area in linguistics, including MA thesis, MPhil thesis, PhD thesis and Doctorate thesis. Entitled “Categorical Speech Perception Across the Lifespan”, Dr FENG’s thesis presents a comprehensive research work on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese speech sounds for native speakers at different ages from toddlers, teenagers, young adults, to elderlies with normal cognitive function and mild cognitive impairment.

Here is the link for review Dr FENG's thesis.

Miss Kitty LAW Lai Ping, Year 4 student in BA (Hons) in Chinese and Bilingual Studies (BACBS), was selected for the Outstanding Service Awards for Tertiary Students 2021/22 by the Hong Kong Student Services Association and the Hong Kong Outstanding Tertiary Students’ Services Association. The prestigious award was introduced in 1991 to recognise tertiary students with outstanding leadership and significant contribution to the community.

During 2021-2022, Kitty organised 9 activities to raise the public awareness of various social issues such as ocean environment preservation and stray animals. Her dedication to the community makes her become one of the two PolyU students receiving the award this year.

“PolyU 85th Anniversary Performance cum Putonghua Recitation and Demonstration Workshop”, jointly organised by the Chinese Language Centre of PolyU and the Tertiary Putonghua Recitation Society, was successfully held on 19 November 2022, in Chiang Chen Studio Theatre, PolyU.

Participants from PolyU Putonghua recitation and demonstration workshop collaborated with members of the Tertiary Putonghua Recitation Society to give 13 recitation performances as a celebratory event for the 85th anniversary of PolyU. The event also served as a successful promotion of the art of recitation. More than 100 guests from PolyU, other tertiary institutions as well as the community enjoyed the afternoon and showed great appreciation for the performances.

EVENTS

• (20 December 2022) Distinguished Lectures in Humanities: 「現代漢語定式句」及「時間參照、完句性和動詞的限定性」