
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures has an active research culture that draws Faculty and Graduate Students into collaborative projects.
Our key research interests are in the cultural, anthropological, political, philosophical, historical and literary aspects of diverse countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
We explore the ancient, modern and contemporary contexts of social and cultural change around the globe and publish our research in diverse languages of the world.
This breadth of regions, languages, cultures and disciplines is the foundation of the School’s research strength in interdisciplinary and comparative research projects.
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures has:
• a vibrant research seminar series (all welcome) that operates during university semesters on Wednesday afternoons 4.30-6.00 pm.
• an active research mentoring program for HKU academic colleagues and graduate students.
• regular international conferences and workshops.
• faculty with publications in top academic journals and with prestigious publishing houses
Title | Staff Name | Type | Start date | End date | amount |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Negotiating Spirituality and Urban Space in Jiangbeicheng: Local History, Religion and the Making of Modern China | Li Ji | ECS | January 1,2018 | June 30, 2021 | 523056 |
Early Career Scheme Award from Research Grants Council, Government of Hong Kong | Poch Daniel Taro | ECS | 2016 | 2017 | 450000 |
Epidemic Disease and Medical Innovation in Early Modern Japan | ECS | January 1, 2017 | June 30, 2020 | 378600 | |
Production of Popular Fiction: Romance and Family Themes in Modern and Contemporary Korea | Kim Su Yun | ECS | December 1, 2014 | May 30, 2018 | |
The Fall of Neoliberalism in the Chilean Post-Dictatorship Novel (2000-2020) | Fernández Melleda Bárbara | ECS | January 2023 | December 2025 | 415,000 |
Traumatic Histories and the National Imagination: Narrative Construction in National Memory Museums in the United States | Gruenewald Tim | ECS | July 1, 2016 | April 30, 2019 | 340000 |
Inventing Lives: Fictional Artistic Practice in the Shadow of Cold War Hollywood | Steinberg Monica | ECS | January 1, 2021 | December 31, 2023 | 474000 |
Louis Cha Fund of Faculty of Arts and Strategic Research Theme, China-West Studies Fund, Co-PI | Kim Su Yun | Faculty of Arts | |||
Abe Fellow, ocial Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, and The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership | Fellowship | 1999 | |||
King's/HKU Fellowship Awards 2019-20 | Wong John D. | Fellowship | August 31, 2018 | Auguest 31, 2021 | 50000 |
Canon Foundation in Europe Research Fellowship | Poch Daniel Taro | Fellowship | 2010 | 2011 | 265000 |
Asia Leadership Fellow, nternational House of Japan and The Japan Foundation Asia Center | Fellowship | 2003 | |||
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship | Kim Su Yun | Fellowship | |||
Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London | Wong John D. | Fellowship | 2010 | 2010 | |
Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, Tokyo Univeristy | Fellowship | 2015 & 2019 | |||
Teaching Exchange Fellowship, University of Queensland | Vogt Roland | Fellowship | 2022 | 2022 | |
Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship | Poch Daniel Taro | Fellowship | 2011 | 2012 | 367800 |
Doris Zimmern HKU-Cambridge Hughes Hall Fellowship, University of Cambridge | Vogt Roland | Fellowship | 2017 | 2017 | |
German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) Study Fellowship | Poch Daniel Taro | Fellowship | 1999 | 2005 | |
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship | Poch Daniel Taro | Fellowship | 2016 | 2017 | 306000 |
German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship | Poch Daniel Taro | Fellowship | 2002 | 2003 | 62500 |
Showcases of New Tokyo: Modern Architecture, Space, and Social Management in the Reconstructed Capital, 1923-1930 | GRF | January 1, 2014 | December 31, 2016 | 190000 | |
The Cultural Policies in Taiwan in the 20th Century and their Relationships to the Formation of Modern Taiwanese Consciousness | GRF | December 1, 2013 | May 31, 2016 | 310500 | |
Borderless Europe and its Discontents: National Sovereignty in Times of Crisis
| Auer Stefan | GRF | January 1, 2017 | June 30, 2019 | 60000 |
Bottling Goodness: Culture and Commerce in Layered Identities of Dairy and Soy Beverages along the Periphery of China under Western Influences | Wong John D. | GRF | October 1, 2017 | September 30, 2021 | 477870 |
Medicalising Ethiopia | GRF | September 1, 2019 | February 28, 2023 | 346990 | |
Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of Hong Kong, 1930s-1998 | Wong John D. | GRF | 2020 | 2023 | |
Making Religion, Making Local Society: The Social History of a Catholic Village in Northeast China | Li Ji | GRF | January 1, 2016 | November 30, 2017 | 627340 |
Tea's Party. Tea in the American Revolution, 1773-1776 | Fichter James | GRF | September 1, 2018 | August 31, 2021 | 288640 |
GRF : A Native History of Early Modern Amuria | Kim Loretta | GRF | January 1, 2013 | June 30, 2016 | 293700 |
United Through Separation: Foreign Missionaries, Korean Christians, and Government Officials, 1882-1942 | Cha Paul S.K. | GRF | September 1, 2016 | February 29, 2020 | 404500 |
Christianity on the Move: Routes and Religious Mobility in Late Imperial and Modern China from 1750s to 1950s
| Li Ji | GRF | January 1, 2021 | December 31, 2023 | 604938 |
The Politics of Japanese Popular Culture in China (1980s - present) | GRF | October 1, 2019 | September 30, 2022 | 738585 | |
Pablo Neruda in China | Fernández Melleda Bárbara | GRF | 1 January 2025 | 31 December 2027 | 183,764 |
Endangered Icon: A Postwar History of Japan's Efforts to Save the "Sacred Crane" from the Brink of Extinction | GRF | June 28, 2021 | June 28, 2024 | 305000 | |
Japanese Popular Culture and the Cultural Formation of Hong Kong Society | GRF | October 1, 2017 | September 30, 2019 | 596000 | |
The EU and the global ‘tech war’: how contestation over digital technologies is reconfiguring European diplomacy, security and regulatory activity’ | Vogt Roland | GRF | 2021 | 2023 | |
Weaving Onomastic Tapestries: Corpus-Building and Analysis of Non-Chinese Names in Northeastern China, 1368-1948 | Kim Loretta | GRF | January 1, 2018 | April 15, 2021 | 273000 |
Middlebrow Literature and Feminist Imagination: Towards A New Genealogy of the Novel in Korea, 1930-1960 | Kim Su Yun | GRF | |||
Cinematic Virtual Reality: Defining the Language of a New Medium | Gruenewald Tim | GRF | September 1, 2019 | August 31, 2021 | 262299 |
Between norm entrepreneurship and norm coercion: the influence of European policies on tax evasion on Asian financial centres | Vogt Roland | GRF | January 1, 2017 | April 30, 2020 | 145500 |
Making Hong Kong Home: Economic Take-off, Private-Sector Homeownership, and Accommodating Middle Class Aspirations since the 1970s 此身安處買吾家:上世紀七十年代以降中產置業夢與香港的經濟起飛 | Wong John D. | HSSPFS | 2023 | 2025 | 476100 |
Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar | Kim Su Yun | Other | |||
Cross-national Interdisciplinary Research Grant, Harvard-Yenching Institute, PI | Kim Su Yun | Other | |||
Five-year tenure-track position Grant, Korea Foundation | Lee Kangsoon | Others | 2014 | 2014 | |
Visiting lecturer Grant, Korea Foundation, Korea | Lee Kangsoon | Others | 2016 | 2020 | |
The EU as a global actor and EU-China relations (Jean Monnet Module, EU Commission ) | Vogt Roland | Others | 2016 | 2019 | |
Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobilities on the Belt and Road (BRINFAITH) | Li Ji | Others | 2019 | 2023 | 6252078 |
Prize Research Grant in History and Economics, Cambridge University | Wong John D. | Others | 2009 | 2010 | |
A Telecollaborative Project on Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness (ILLSA) | Martinez Valerie | Others | 2016 | 2019 | 1106153 |
Fulbright Institute of International Education | Wong John D. | Others | 2010 | 2012 | |
Henry Luce Foundation Grant, National Humanities Center Fellow | Wong John D. | Others | 2021 | 2022 | |
The Academy of Korean Studies, Cold War Feminism and Modern Korean Literature | Kim Su Yun | Research grant |

GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
SMLC Book Series with Hong Kong University Press
Series Editor: Dixon H. W. Wong
The Global Connections series explores the movement of ideas, people, technologies, capital and goods across national and regional borders. Books in the series reveal how these interconnections have the power to produce new global forms of cultures, politics, identities and economies. Seeking to explore the dynamics of change, the series includes both historical and contemporary topics. It focuses on interactions between the world's diverse cultures through the production of new interdisciplinary knowledge.
Global Connections welcomes submissions to the series from authors working on sole authored or edited volumes. The series has published in Chinese and English at this point but welcomes authors working in other languages as well.
Contact the Editor, Dixon Wong in the first instance to discuss your proposal.