Campus Digest

Three HKBU scholars awarded funding from Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation

13 Jun 2013

(From left): Professor Chen Feng, Professor Emilie Yeh and Dr. Chu Yin-wah receive funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (From left): Professor Chen Feng, Professor Emilie Yeh and Dr. Chu Yin-wah receive funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
(From left): Professor Chen Feng, Professor Emilie Yeh and Dr. Chu Yin-wah receive funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange

 

Professor Chen Feng of the Department of Government and International Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Professor Emilie Yeh of the Academy of Film of the School of Communication, were each awarded funding for their research projects from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange while Dr. Chu Yin-wah, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, was granted funding to organise a conference.   Professor Chen received US$55,000 for a three-year research project entitled “Forming Labor NGOs: Leadership and Strategy”. The emergence of NGOs in China has been changing the social landscape. The development and effectiveness of NGOs often rely on devoted and passionate individuals who play a leadership role and constitute the micro-foundation of these organisations. Professor Chen said: “By focusing on labor NGOs in China, the project will examine the role of leadership and activists and highlight these as crucial variables in explaining variations in the patterns and activities of civic groups. Through exploring how labor NGOs influence local policy makers, and serve, educate and mobilise workers, this project will also provide a new dimension for understanding social actors’ civic engagement as a mode of participation as well as changing state��"society interactions.”    Professor Yeh was granted US$35,000 for a three-year research project on “Wenyi文藝 and Film Marketing in Republican China”. Professor Yeh said: “The project will conduct content analysis of 20 to 30 film magazines and hundreds of advertisements from the 1910s to the 1940s in order to explain marketing functions of motion pictures in Republican China. We will also explore and describe the crossover between the literary and film fields in the 1920s and 1930s in order to conceptualise the institution of cinema as an emerging culture”. This is the third research grant Professor Yeh received from the Foundation as principal investigator.   Dr. Chu was granted US$20,000 to organise a conference on “The Asian Developmental State: Reexaminations and New Departures” in December 2013. She said that the two-day conference would focus on three major themes: (1) The developmental state: continuing relevance to East Asian cases, (2) China and India as developmental states, (3) State and market: neoliberal, developmental, capitalist. A total of 11 invited papers will be presented at the conference and scholars have been invited to serve as discussants. This is the second time Dr. Chu has won an award from the Foundation.