Visiting Scholars

The Hong Kong History Centre, based in the School of Humanities at the University of Bristol (UK) hosts a visiting scholars scheme annually.

The scheme welcomes expressions of interest globally from colleagues at various stages of their career who would like to contribute to, and benefit from, research activities at the Centre.


Current Visiting Scholars

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Past Visiting Scholars

Visiting Research Associate

Dr. Rosaria Franco (2023/24)

Rosaria Franco is an Assistant Professor in Modern History at the Chinese campus of the University of Nottingham. Her research is situated at the intersection of history of childhood, refugee history, and the history of empires and colonialism.  She is writing a transimperial history of Anglo-American humanitarian assistance to Chinese refugee children in post-war and cold war Hong Kong.
Dr. Diki Sherpa (2023/24)

Dr. Diki Sherpa, is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Knowledge Alternatives, School of Social Sciences, FLAME University, India. She holds a Ph.D. in History from The Chinese University of Hong Kong where she explored how governing practices were transferred and adapted across the British Empire, tracing the circulation of administrative models from colonial India to early Hong Kong. At FLAME, her current research focuses on colonial gazetteers as historical sources, exploring how they reflected the evolving role of knowledge production in India after 1857. By examining colonial political debates, epistemological anxieties, and shifting definitions of knowledge, her work investigates how ideological transformations under Crown rule influenced the structures and purposes of knowledge. Her broader research interests span imperial history and colonial history, Knowledge production, South and East Asian history. 
Dr. Liza Kam (2024/25)

Dr. Liza Wing Man Kam is an Assistant Professor in Department of East Asian Studies (Chinese Studies) at University of Vienna. Her research interests include Hong Kong and Taiwan’s colonial architecture and the transmutation in their particular postcolonial settings, postwar cultural and urban spaces, and culinary cultures. She conducted her PhD research at the Bauhaus in Germany and have been teaching and researching in Germany, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US and Japan.
Chi Man Kwong photoDr. Kwong Chi Man (2024/25)

Dr. Kwong Chi Man is an associate professor in the history department of Hong Kong Baptist University. He specialises in the military and naval history of modern East Asia, particularly from the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) to the 1970s. He has published Eastern Fortress A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840–1970 (co-authored) and Hongkongers in the British Armed Forces. His works can also be found in Modern Asian Studies, War in History, and Journal of Military History. Recently, he released a number of Digital Humanities projects, such as the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong: A Spatial History Project: https://digital.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/japanese_occupation_of_hongkong/

Visiting Postgraduate Research (PGR) student

Ryan Choi portrait.Ryan Choi (2023/24)

Ryan Choi is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on Chinese-language collaborationist literature in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong (1941-1945). Through a critical analysis of documentary and literary texts published in newspapers and periodicals, as well as personal documents such as diaries and memoirs, his research aims to reconstruct the cultural landscape of occupied Hong Kong.
Junwei Li portraitJunwei Li (2023/24)

Junwei Li is a PhD student from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research delves into the colonial government's regulations on density management in 1950s-60s Hong Kong. These regulations and laws significantly shaped the high-density housing landscape we see today. The study explores the colonial approach to private property, highlighting the administrative strategies and their evolution in response to socio-economic changes. By examining the interplay between local contexts and global knowledge, the research reveals the origins, transformation, and localization of density management practices.
Yuwei Fu (2023/24)

Yuwei FU is currently a PhD student at the history department of Lingnan University, where her research focuses on the shaping of Hong Kong identity in postwar years. Before joining Lingnan University, she received an MSc in History of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her paper US Cold War Music Diplomacy in the PRC was presented at the Cold War Research Centre International Student Conference at the Corvinus University of Budapest. She also gave a presentation The Beatles, Hong Kong Youth Culture, and Hong Kong Identity at the NACBS conference in Denver.
Kachun Alex Wong (2024/25)

Kachun Alex Wong is a PhD Candidate in Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. His dissertation is supported by SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2024-6). His dissertation, tentatively titled “Categorizing Housing: Rural, village, and indigenous housing in the New Territories, Hong Kong, the 1970s and the present”, examines rural public housing, squatters, village-type houses and small houses. The dissertation utilizes both archival and social methods to examine the housing as entanglements between architecture, and law and policy.
Samuel Dic Sum Lai photoSamuel Lai (2024/25)

Samuel Lai is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, University of London. His research focuses on Hong Kong foodways, in particular caacaanteng (cha chan teng; tea restaurant) and its multiple facades of cuisine, operation, skill and sociality. Based primarily on his 14-month observant-participation as waiter, cook and baker, he seeks to understand the daily lives through flavour and cuisines, revealing habits and values in Hong Kong.