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Worldwide, the population is aging rapidly. One in two children born after the year 2000 is expected to live up to his or her 100th birthday. Hong Kong is no exception. While the number of older adults aged 65 or above has been expected to rise from 1.16 million in 2016 to 2.59 million in 2066 (2.2 times), the number of adults aged 80 or above has been expected to increase from 340,300 in 2016 to 1.21 million in 2066 (3.5 times). The growth of centenarians could be even more – from about 2,800 in 2014 to 46,800 in 2064 (16.7 times). Enabling the oldest members of our society to live a dignified, autonomous and satisfying life – despite their age – is the key goal for initiatives and policies that support successful aging for all. Survival to age 80 is qualitatively different from survival from 80 to 100 years or older. The latter group tends to face more physical frailty, more difficult recovery from diseases, the departure of their spouse and even of their adult children, and their own imminent death. Despite these often-unresolvable ontological situations, our previous study – The 2011 Hong Kong Centenarian Study – revealed a group of near-centenarians and centenarians (NCCs; aged 95 or over) who lived a dignified, autonomous and satisfying life. While our previous study was the first in the territory to survey the physical and psychosocial well-being of NCCs, this study will investigate how these extremely old individuals cope with their multidimensional challenges using a century’s worth of coping resources and strategies. This study conceptualises the coping process of NCCs as managing the loss and gains of limited personal and social resources. To cope with an adversity, older adults have to deploy personal and social resources to various reactive and proactive, cognitive and behavioural coping strategies. Successful resolution restores well-being and may lead to growth in resources. Families of these older adults are situated in the current era where aged-old wisdom constantly meets with new technologies under the changing normative family structure. In exploring the coping process, this study will investigate the impacts of indigenous wisdom, family caregiving and use of technology on the quality of life of the older adults and their families. Our findings will enable policymakers and care professionals to devise responsive strategies to facilitate aging-in-place for older adults and support to families with adults of advanced age as well as prepare the younger cohorts for aging successfully into their last decade of life. This study employs a convergent parallel mixed-method design. Cognitively sound Hong Kong Chinese older adults who have had their 95th birthday will be recruited together with their primary family caregivers. The Hong Kong Council of Social Service will support the recruitment of participants through their networks of elderly and rehabilitation services. Quantitative data, including physical health, psychological well-being, social support, spirituality, personality, coping strategies, lifestyles, health and social care utilisation, use of technology, caregiving experience and demographic characteristics, will be collected through a structured survey. Accounts of participants coping with adversities will be assessed using a life-story interview approach. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be collected through face-to-face interviews. Each data collection session will last for about 2.5 to 3 hours, with both the caregiver and the older adult participating. While the quantitative data will facilitate comparisons across participants and with international centenarian studies, qualitative data will provide rich contextual information about participants’ struggles and coping processes. The use of the mixed-method approach balances the depth and breadth of the information collected. The estimated sample size is 150 dyads. The project will take 36 months. As the third generation of centenarian studies begins to blossom worldwide, a centenarian study of Hong Kong Chinese older adults that is based on a clear conceptual framework with emphasis on the contribution of indigenous wisdom and gerontechnology, that capitalises on the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and that engages the voices of family caregivers is urgently needed to inform the next era of policies that will suit the needs of families with adults of advanced age.

Since its origin in the early 1900s, the discipline of play therapy has gained meaningful visibility in Western countries, but is still less recognized by professionals and the public in Hong Kong, compared to other approaches that support child mental health, despite a growing body of evidence for its effectiveness for child development and treatment. Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) is the most influential manualized play therapy approach. To date, five meta-analytic studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of CCPT interventions, one of which also included a systematic review. Ray et al. (2015) conducted a meta-analysis and systematic review of 23 randomized control trials (RCTs) conducted in school settings, finding that play therapy produced statistically significant outcomes for children with disruptive behavior, internalizing, self-efficacy, and academic problems. Lin and Bratton (2015) conducted a meta-analytic review of 24 RCTs of child-centered play therapy, and found it to be effective for externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, caregiver-child relationship stress, and self-efficacy. A search of the Play Therapy Outcome Research Database shows a further 12 RCT studies conducted since 2015, although these have not been reviewed for rigor or consistent methodology here. Child-centered play therapy has been designated as a promising evidence-based mental health intervention by the Results First Clearinghouse (NREPP) and the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC). Though promising, there is still a gap in the evidence base compared to more established approaches such as behavioral intervention. This gap is highlighted by emerging trends in play therapy practice. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the social, cognitive, and physical development of a cohort of young children has become a focus of research attention. Together with this, the growth of online intervention and teleplay during the pandemic, in the context of broader digitalization opportunities for play-based intervention – such as virtual reality – are highlighted. A key question for practitioners and researchers in Hong Kong, is the application of this approach in the contemporary local context. While there is evidence showing the effectiveness of these approaches in Western populations, the applicability of these approaches has yet to be meaningfully studied locally. Although the cultural background of Hong Kong is diverse, the predominant culture is Chinese, and it is believed that Chinese family dynamics differ from those of Western families. This highlights the need to develop a locally relevant approach in Hong Kong, which can only benefit from dialogue between local practitioners and researchers, with prominent international figures in the field. The proposed project will involve a conference that is aimed at practitioners, researchers, and students in the field of play therapy, that will also be open to the public. Prominent international scholars or practitioners in play therapy will be invited. The conference will aim to meet several related goals. An education day (or rather half-day) will introduce key play therapy approaches (international and local) to audience members who would like to learn from well regarded figures within those fields. The first day of the conference will present the current state of the field and trends in play therapy, which will include teleplay and digitalization, and work with relevant populations. The second day will highlight research methodology in play therapy research and questions related to culture and the local and regional context, including work with parents and families. An informal meeting on the fourth day aims to consolidate growing collaboration and exchange. The impact of the proposed project goes beyond enhancing the skills of practitioners. It also aims at establishing a network of people interested in developing play therapy in the local community. The team will maintain a mailing list of this group to facilitate future communication. The dialogue between the international experts and the local parties will provide a base for future development. The conference proceedings will be published in an e-format, together with videos of the keynote speeches on the project’s webpage which will have use as future training materials, while the collected data will be potentially useful in future research.

Conventional studies on breast cancer (BC) and gynecological cancer (GC) survivors primarily focus on psychological, sexual, relational, and physical stress, as well as social stigma. However, beyond empirical analyses of these survivors' experiences, there is a need for sociological insights to theorize their post-recovery conditions. In addition, while the social science literature on BC and GC survivors largely centers on Western countries and the Middle East, research on these survivors in Hong Kong has been limited. Among the few studies conducted in Hong Kong, the focus has been predominantly on emotional well-being and quality of life (e.g., Chow et al., 2018; So et al., 2014; Zeng et al., 2011), as well as work productivity (e.g., Cheng et al., 2023; So et al., 2022), indicating significant opportunities for further exploration.
This research aims to explore how breast cancer (BC) and gynecological cancer (GC) impact the sense of femininity in survivors and examine whether and in what ways their experiences have shaped their self-identity. It will discuss sex and intimacy, as well as the working life of BC and GC survivors, as vital domains of their private and public life respectively. Erving Goffman’s negotiation of self (1961) and the feminist orientation of feminine and sexual ideals will serve as the theoretical entry point. The core questions under study include: How does the loss or impairment of female organs affect femininity and, consequently, the sexual and intimate relationships of BC and GC survivors? How does cancer affect their work life and career aspirations? How do they cope with their transformative experiences, and what practical and humanistic strategies can aid in navigating post-recovery life? This study will advocate for the reclamation of selfhood by understanding how negative influences arise, thus purposively reconstructing the self. Additionally, recognizing the (often unspoken) challenges faced by BC and GC survivors, the proposed study will explore appropriate service and policy interventions for local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the Hospital Authority (HA) to enhance the well-being of this population.
This study will utilize qualitative in-depth interviews, conducting a total of 80 interviews with a diverse range of subjects. Participants will include 40 BC survivors, 15 GC survivors, 10 intimate partners and coworkers, and 15 professionals from the allied medical and healthcare sector, such as medical social workers, counselors, practitioners from healthcare NGOs, hospital volunteers, and nurses. To ensure a diversity of voices and experiences, there will be no restrictions on the racial and cultural backgrounds of interviewees, provided that they have been living and working in Hong Kong at the time of the interview. However, a minimum of 45 local Chinese survivors is anticipated among the total participants (out of 55 survivors).
This study is expected to make several significant contributions to existing research. First, it will introduce the themes of sex and intimacy, femininity, and selfhood—areas that are rarely studied and yet are crucial to local cancer research. The findings regarding the sexual and intimate experiences of BC and GC survivors will provide alternative insights into self and identity analysis. Second, the results of this study will assist managers and practitioners in the medical and healthcare sectors, including the Hospital Authority (HA) and NGOs, in designing effective strategies and services to support these survivors. Moreover, it will raise the awareness among human resource management in the job market about the conditions of female cancer survivors with a humanistic approach.

Many studies of categorical emotion perception rely on morphing to generate stimuli. The basic function of morphing is to create a number of transitional faces of the same person that morph from one particular emotional expression to another, thereby providing a continuum of emotions. The rationale for choosing which two particular expressions to morph, however, is rarely mentioned. In the dimensional account of emotion, emotion identification depends on which emotional expressions are compared. Such an account therefore requires multiple morphing combinations rather than an exclusive morphing pattern to capture the relativity of emotion identification. The dimensional account further predicts that the categorical feature between two emotional expressions is less obvious when they are located in the same quarter of a 2 (pleasantness) x 2 (activation) dimensional space. The relative strength of these two dimensions may also differ. There is little empirical work verifying the role of the dimensional account of emotion, a gap the proposed research will fill in a three-phase study. In the first phase, a new photobank of emotional faces with all combinations of morphing sequences will be built. To enhance ecological validity, it will contain both exaggerated version of the expressions found in traditional photobanks and their natural version. In the second phase, the categorical features of the traditional morphing sequence and other morphing sequences will be compared. If the dimensional account of emotion is correct, the time taken to identify the emotional expressions should be longer if the expressions are morphed based on two basic emotions that are located in the same quarter rather than in different quarters. The final phase will involve a comparison of dimensional strength. The emotional expressions within a pair that differs exclusively in the pleasantness dimension are expected to be more discriminable than those within a pair that differs in the activation dimension. The results obtained in the second and third phases will allow verification of the thesis that discriminability is a relative concept determined by the dimensional nature of basic emotions.

This study aims to identify the linguistic features that facilitate emotional expression and connection within the hospice community by analyzing digital narratives shared on hospice care websites and support group forums. The significance of this study lies in its investigation of how language shapes the hospice care experience, particularly in the context of anticipatory grief among terminally ill patients and their carers. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the UK as the best country for end-of-life care and Hong Kong 20th out of 80 countries. Based on UK best practices, this proposed study aims to improve the understanding of digital platforms in end-of-life care and provide insights for developing effective hospice services in diverse cultural contexts. We will build a comprehensive text corpus of 1,000 narrative stories of at least 600,000 words from hospice centre websites and support group forums in Hong Kong and the UK. This project will result in the first corpus of its kind offering original insights into linguistic development such as similarities and differences in narrative structure, language use, and attitudinal expressions between these two cultural contexts. This study, grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), will examine key register variables, namely— field (topic), tenor (participant relationships), and mode (communication channel), — to understand their influence on hospice discourse. We will analyze the generic structures and grief stages of the texts for guiding information flow, and we will explore discourse semantics for how meaning is constructed through specific lexical choices. For example, we will focus on the role of conjunctions in establishing coherence, the use of personal pronouns in fostering personalization and intimacy to enhance emotional engagement, and the types of verb processes that convey mental states and actions. Key evaluative resources will also be investigated to reflect the speaker’s stance and attitude toward the experiences of end-of-life care. Using a mixed-method strategy, this project will use corpus statistical analysis methods such as Loglikelihood Ratio and AntConc to extract and analyze linguistic patterns from the corpus data. Based on our pilot study, early observations reveal that narrative structures and expressions of grief and care vary between institutional and individual narratives. Hospice care websites use more formal and structured language, while support group forums have a personal and emotive style. Hong Kong narratives emphasize familial relationships and communal support, while UK narratives may reflect individualistic perspectives. A larger data set analysis may reveal subtle differences in narrative styles and attitudinal expressions between the two regions, revealing significant differences in lexicogrammatical features, structural organization, and interpersonal meanings across digital platforms and cultural contexts. In terms of theoretical and cultural implications, the study can advance the field of SFL by applying its linguistic principles to the analysis of digital narratives in a healthcare setting, particularly the interpersonal metafunction of language in grief narratives. Comparing grief narratives from Hong Kong and the UK will contribute to cross-cultural understanding and tailored support services. Practical and policy implications include assisting health professionals, carers and support groups to understand the various ways in which people express and manage anticipatory grief in digital environments, as well as improving care support services. The research findings will be disseminated through the publication of academic journal articles, conference visits, and seminars, with the intention of stimulating further research and attention in the field of hospice care. The overall aim of this research project is to understand hospice grief and, as encouraged by the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG), to promote the wellbeing and healthy living of an ageing population.

Prior research has documented that controlling shareholders may expropriate wealth through tunneling-like connected transactions. This project explores how firms with forthcoming transfer of assets to related parties justify the transaction price prior to the tunneling transactions without attracting investors' attention or regulatory intervention, and how firms respond to the economic consequences of these trading strategies. Specifically, the questions of interest are whether suspected tunneled firms use asset impairment before asset-transfer connected transactions to reduce the transaction price, and as a consequence, whether these firms manage contemporaneous earnings to avoid decreases in reported earnings? Our analyses will provide insight into the policy implications of the mandatory disclosure of connected parties (related parties) and connected transactions (related party transactions).

This research explores the circumstances under which people from ethnic minorities can succeed from ethnic minorities can succeed in Hong Kong, and identifies appropriate interventions for those in disadvantaged situations.

Free play is unstructured, spontaneous, and voluntary play activities driven by an individual’s own will and choices. While free play is often considered indoors, active free play outdoors in open spaces should be addressed. In urban environments such as Hong Kong, the planning, design, and control of play spaces have traditionally been governed by professionals such as policymakers, urban planners, and architects. This top-down approach has led to the gradual evolution of regulations that focus on management and accident prevention, resulting in long lists of restrictions and limitations. In the context of play spaces, this creates many restrictions about who is allowed to play, when and where play can occur, and how play is defined. In these circumstances, advocating for free-play-friendly public spaces is essential.
In this regard, place-making is an initiative for planning and designing free-play-friendly public spaces. Place-making is a collaborative process that involves reimagining and reinventing public spaces to enhance the connection between people and the places they share. Place-making facilitates community engagement, builds social capital, and enhances community capacity for action, ultimately fostering an inclusive environment that encourages free play. Adopting a place-making approach to building a free-play-friendly environment is still in its early stages in Hong Kong. We need to consolidate experiences and identify key elements and strategies for co-creating a free-play-friendly environment.
This project “Building a free-play-friendly city: An interdisciplinary collaboration in place-making’, consists of pre-conference workshops and visits (1 day) and the main conference (1.5 days). Target participants include scholars, practitioners, policymakers, NGO staff, urban planners, architects, social designers, cultural and heritage conservators, and students. The pre-conference workshops will be conducted in parallel, with two workshops (3.5 hours each) for invited knowledgeable speakers to share practical experiences in place-making and engage communities in co-creating free play spaces. Participants will actively participate in the workshops to learn critical approaches to place-making. There will also be a half-day visit to a project featuring place-making for free play in the community.
The 1.5-day main conference will feature local and international speakers presenting research and practical experiences in designing public play spaces for free play. There will be three keynote speeches and three symposium sessions. The symposium themes will include cross-cultural dialogue, the social impact of free-play-friendly environments, and best practices in school environment. Each symposium will have two to three speakers sharing their place-making and free-play expertise. Networking meetings will be arranged for speakers and stakeholders to exchange collaborative ideas on place-making and free play. Round-table discussions will be conducted to foster collaborative efforts among scholars and stakeholders, aiming for mid- and long-term impact.

This proposed project aims to re-examine China as a historical reality—no matter how fluid and malleable—against the rising tide of deconstructionism. It takes the form of an intellectual conversation among internationally renowned scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, England, and the United States, who will have an in-depth discussion of the changing nature of China as a viable historical entity as well as a modern state. The contributors to this project will engage in a discussion of historical China and the discourses of China from different angles and in different contexts. The participants will examine how contemporary China has effloresced from a historically transformative imperial, cultural, or spatial framework with both inheritances and ruptures. This project will organize a two-day international conference in 2025 on the campus of Hong Kong Shue Yan University that is open to both academics and the public.

When we think about World Heritage Sites, we often picture a straightforward relationship between UNESCO, national governments, and local communities. However, this view misses crucial players in between – regional governments, museums, and cultural institutions that do much of the actual work in heritage management and promotion. These organizations, which operate between national and local levels, play vital roles in World Heritage nominations. They invest significant resources, manage heritage sites, and shape how cultural heritage is presented to the public. Yet, current research tends to overlook their importance, focusing instead on national-local relationships. This study examines China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) World Heritage project to understand how these regional cultural institutions contribute to national heritage initiatives. The research traces the development of the MSR concept from its emergence in UNESCO during the 1960s to 2024, looking at two main aspects:
• How new museums, exhibitions, and research centres present the Maritime Silk Road
• How existing historical sites adapt their stories to connect with this cultural route
This research bridges heritage studies and sociology by examining heritage as a form of capital that shapes institutional power dynamics. Traditional sociological theories of cultural capital focus on individuals, but this study shows how institutions strategically use heritage resources, revealing new dimensions of how cultural power operates at organizational levels. The study also challenges conventional understanding of heritage governance. By examining how regional cultural institutions create their own spaces of influence within seemingly top-down heritage systems, it provides new insights into how cultural governance actually works in practice, offering fresh perspectives on the relationship between global heritage frameworks and local institutional practices.