Directors
Prof. Robert Bickers, Centre Co-Director
Robert Bickers is a historian of colonialism, in particular of the British Empire and its relations with China and the histories of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and modern Chinese history. He has authored eight books and countless articles on the British in China, and overseen numerous projects including the Hong Kong History Project and Historical Photographs of China. Robert Bickers is Professor of History at the University of Bristol and is currently working on a new research project covering the history of Hong Kong.
Dr. Vivian Kong, Centre Co-Director
Vivian Kong is Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Bristol. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Vivian received her BA and MPhil from the University of Hong Kong, and completed her PhD at Bristol in 2019. Since her PhD she has worked closely with Bristol's Hong Kong History Project. Her research to-date has focused on Hong Kong and its transnational connections, and she has published on migration, identities, and civil society in interwar Hong Kong. Her first book, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong 1910-45 (Cambridge University Press), explains the long history of engagement that the multiracial residents of Hong Kong have made with Britishness, and how this affects identity formation in the city today.
Prof. Ray Yep, Centre Research Director
Ray Kin-man Yep is a historian specialising in the political economy of China's reforms, late colonial governance of Hong Kong and contentious politics. He has published in leading peer-reviewed journals and has authored multiple books on Hong Kong studies. Ray has held visiting positions in Bristol University, Peking University, University of Macau, Brookings Institution and Academia Sinica. He is also active in public service and has served in the Central Policy Unit, Advisory Council for Environment, and Strategy Subcommittee of Sustainable Development Council in Hong Kong.
Postdoctoral Research Associates
Dr. Allan Pang
Allan Pang is a historian of Hong Kong, Chinese overseas, and Southeast Asia. His research engages with themes such as history education, popular culture, and decolonisation from a transregional perspective across East and Southeast Asia. He received his BA and MPhil from the University of Hong Kong and is completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge. His current research examines formal and informal history education across Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Malaya/Malaysia, and Singapore from the 1950s onwards. At the Hong Kong History Centre, Allan is also conducting a project on the history of Chinese popular music across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History and the Historical Journal.
Kelvin Chan
Kelvin Chan is a historian of medicine and the British Empire, with a particular focus on colonial Hong Kong. His PhD research focuses on the history of psychiatry during the mid and late 20th centuries. It examines the transformation of colonial psychiatry in the age of decolonization and, more importantly, its influence on our current understanding of mental illness. Part of his research has been published in China Information and Medical History.
His next project examines the globalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine between the 1950s and the 1980s, investigating the transnational businesses of Chinese medicine companies and careers of practitioners between Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and North America.
Postgraduate Researchers
Alex Cheung
Seeking Home in the Colonial Port: Migration and Settlement of Chinese Workers in Hong Kong, c. 1900-1941
Alex Cheung's research examines the daily life experience of working-class migrants in early twentieth-century Hong Kong when lower-class Chinese moved across Asian port cities to seek fortunes. Many came to stay in Hong Kong, and colonial officials found it necessary to govern urban problems such as housing, labour force, and cross-border movement.
Focusing on the interaction of the colonial state and working-class migrants, he will explore both opportunities and restrictions of the British colonial port for its mobile residents. In the broader context of port city and migration in modern time, he seek to address on the meaning of mobility for lower-class port-city dwellers.
Phyllis Chan
Ambiguous Nationality: British Subjects of Chinese Descent, c.1880-1962
Phyllis Chan's research looks at the legal nationality of people of Chinese descent born in Hong Kong. Prior to the 1960s, English common law bestowed British subjecthood (which in turn conferred nationality rights) on all those born within British dominion, no matter their colour.
However, due to imperial racial hierarchies, patchy birth registration, and the open border with mainland China, officials often questioned the rights of subjects of Chinese descent, or saw their status as ‘doubtful’ or ambiguous. Her thesis will explore these cases to interrogate the legal and cultural criteria seen as necessary for being ‘British’, and identify the evidence used by subjects who claimed to fulfil them.
Lamia Lung
Hong Kong to Britain: Transnational Families and Migration, c. 1950-1997
Lamia Lung's project explores the experiences of Hong Kong diaspora in Britain from 1950 to 1997, examining the interplay between transnational family linkages, social mobility and identity construction. Hong Kong people who came to Britain had distinct cultural characteristics which set them apart from other Chinese ethnic communities and even their own families in Hong Kong.
She seeks to demonstrate that immigration to Britain was not a one-way process. Through their transnational connections, Hong Kong people from a diverse background with often different aspirations shaped social and political policies in Britain.
Wai Li Chu
The Cold War and Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong’s future, 1979-1984
Wai Li Chu obtained his MPhil at the Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University, before coming to study at Bristol. His project examines the wider contexts of the negotiations between Britain and China over Hong Kong’s future, such as discussions with other powers including the United States and Australia. The project also looks at how decolonisation globally influenced relations between Britain and its colony in this period.
A part-time student, he work at the Public Record Office in Hong Kong as an Assistant Archivist.
Tracy Leung
Governing Youth in post-WWII Hong Kong, 1945-1970s
Tracy Leung's research examines how the colonial government’s strategy in the management of youth changed in relation to the evolving threat of communism in Asia and the global trend towards anti-colonialism in post-WWII Hong Kong. It will explain the staggering change in the government’s attitude towards youth welfare policies, looking into how the colonial state linked up with voluntary youth organizations to deal with the problems of ‘juvenile delinquency’ and regulated youth leisure.
It also engages the broader imperial context by examining how the post- war youth policy in Hong Kong compared with Britain itself and other British colonies, addressing to what extent it was an influential model in and of itself.
Ryan Iu
Imperial Graduates: Mapping Hong Kong’s Elites’ Networks across the British Empire, 1862-1941
Ryan Iu's project investigates the Hong Kong Chinese and Eurasian elite in a local, transregional, and intra-imperial context. These were the alumni of either the Government Central School (est. 1862) or the Diocesan Boys’ School (est. 1869). Through colonial education, they secured a pathway to elite status, and an access to an established ‘old boys’ network’ and the political/ commercial opportunities to expand into Britain and across the Empire.
In time, these local elites formed transpacific, maritime, and intra-imperial connections and significantly causing the origin of internationalism in early Hong Kong under colonial rule.
Duncan Ma
The Making of Cold War Hong Kong: A Trans-national Cultural Geography Study of the Kai Tak Airport, 1945–1998
Duncan Ma’s research examines the formation of Cold War Hong Kong through the lens of Kai Tak Airport. In response to the ever-changing Cold War geopolitics, refurbishments on the Kai Tak Airport had been conducted since 1950s and was finally replaced by the one located in Chek Lap Kok, the current Hong Kong International Airport. This project narrates the Kai Tak Airport was not merely an urban infrastructure, but it will examine the Airport in pragmatic, imaginary, and experiential spaces throughout Hong Kong, East Asia, and the Global World.
With a special attention to cultural productions, it accesses Kai Tak Airport as a landmark. By deciphering the Kai Tak landscape iconography, it will form a better understanding toward the trans-national and cross-cultural dynamics that re-present the Cold War Hong Kong.
