Strategic Research themes
Most of our clusters contribute to more than one theme, and most of our colleagues belong to more than one cluster. The table below shows how they connect
Research Cluster | Population, Wellbeing & Human Behaviour | Urbanisation, Sustainability & Governance | Culture, Equity & Community Development | AI, Society & Social Dynamics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Population Studies | ● | ○ | ○ | ○ |
Health, Wellbeing and Medicine | ● | ○ | ○ | |
Class, Gender and Social Inequalities | ○ | ● | ○ | |
Culture, Theory and Religion | ● | ○ | ||
Economic Lives: Money, Markets and Morals | ○ | ● | ● | |
Crime, Deviance and Governance | ● | ○ | ○ | |
Digital Society, Data and AI | ○ | ○ | ● |
Two of the Faculty’s four themes are co-led from this Department: Professor David Palmer co-leads Culture, Equity and Community Development, and Professor Duoduo Xu co-leads AI, Society and Social Dynamics. The Department also hosts the Global Society and Sustainability Lab, the platform through which Culture, Equity and Community Development connects academic research to partners in government, business and civil society.
The Faculty’s Population, Wellbeing and Human Behaviour theme works across three levels — the individual, the community and the population. Sociology contributes mainly at the population level.
Departmental research in this theme covers demographic estimation of migration and mobility; longitudinal cohort and biomarker analysis of how work, stress, isolation and disadvantage affect health across the life course; the social determinants of ageing, disability and care; childhood development and mental health; and comparative analysis of wellbeing gradients across countries and education systems. Current projects include a multinational study of home modifications and disability in later life (GRF), the Early Childhood Development in Hong Kong longitudinal study (RGC Collaborative Research Fund), the HK-CHILD childhood mental health pilot, and two GRF projects on migration estimation for the Asia Pacific.
The Faculty’s Urbanisation, Sustainability and Governance theme addresses the consequences of rapid urbanisation in China and the Asia-Pacific, and the governance arrangements capable of responding to them.
Departmental research in this theme runs along two lines. The first is urban social structure: how migration, household registration, segregation and neighbourhood conditions distribute opportunity and health within cities; how urban infrastructure and public transit are financed and automated; and how migrant and domestic workers are regulated. The second is governance where formal regulation is weak — corruption and anti-corruption, organised crime and extra-legal protection, the ordering of illegal markets, protest policing, and the social and cultural conditions affecting environmental and ESG governance in Global South contexts. Colleagues also work on climate, crisis and how societies project futures.
The Faculty’s Culture, Equity and Community Development theme is co-led by Professor David Palmer of this Department, and hosts the Global Society and Sustainability Lab, which he directs.
The theme addresses how community development models are changing under technological, demographic and geopolitical disruption, and it prioritises collaboration with Global South partners. Departmental research contributing to it covers religion and spirituality and their transnational circulation, including four funded Belt and Road projects; the cultural and moral frameworks that shape how ESG standards and development projects are received in the communities where they are applied; participatory action research with sexual and gender minorities and with older people; ethnic minority heritage, including the Yao Dao Project in Laos; and quantitative and qualitative research on class, gender, ethnicity and age.
The Faculty’s AI, Society and Social Dynamics theme is co-led by Professor Duoduo Xu of this Department.
Departmental research in this theme covers digital money, blockchain and Web3, including two GRF projects on Hong Kong’s Web3 development and Chinese podcasting; platform governance and the administration of online markets, including illicit ones; online interaction and the norms people bring to digital settings; the effects of automation on work and status; and the quantification of conduct in scoring and credit systems. Colleagues also develop computational methods: network analysis, machine learning applied to demographic and administrative data, and causal inference. Two Common Core courses developed in the Department - on AI and Web3, and on crime, regulation and AI - take these questions to undergraduates.