Hong Kong Baptist University - Faculty of Arts

Welcome to the Faculty of Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University

The Faculty of Arts is an essential part of Hong Kong Baptist University, an institution that is firmly committed to being ”a leading liberal arts university in Asia for the world delivering academic excellence in a caring, creative and global culture.”

Established in 1961, the Faculty of Arts features six departments, a Language Centre, four Research Centres and two institutes:

- Department of Chinese Language and Literature
- Department of English Language and Literature
- Department of Humanities and Creative Writing
- Department of Music
- Department of Religion and Philosophy
- Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies
- Language Centre (serving the entire university)

- Centre for Applied Ethics
- Centre Centre for Chinese Cultural Heritage
- Centre for Sino-Christian Studies
- Centre for Translation
- Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology
- Mr Simon Suen and Mrs Mary Suen Sino-Humanitas Institute

In keeping with the University’s mission, the Faculty of Arts is committed to delivering globally relevant and ethically aware teaching and research, with the aim of contributing to the common good. The Faculty of Arts has identified ”Well-being, Value and the Public Good” as its niche research area. This strategic focus is variously reflected in six cross-faculty research groups (Performance Studies; Chinese and Cross-cultural Health Humanities; Framing Public Culture; Creativity, Self, and Society; Minority Studies/Marginalized Populations Studies; and Anthropocene Studies). The Faculty of Arts makes a significant contribution to the University’s Creative Media/Practice research cluster and is fully engaged in the University’s ambitious Talent100 recruitment drive.

Facilities
The Faculty of Arts pursues its endeavours in an environment that clearly reflects the University’s liberal arts mission. Facilities include:

• Three studio Electroacoustic Music Centre (EMC)
• Two-studio Laboratory for Immersive Arts and Technology (LIATe)
  the highest international standard in 3D immersive audio and video
• Interpreting Laboratory
  offering support for training in consecutive and simultaneous modes of translation
• Phonology Laboratory and a Language Learning Oasis
  providing independent language learning resources

Brooke Cagle / Unsplash

Faculty of Arts Niche Research Area

Well-being, value, and the public good

The Faculty of Arts’ Niche Research Area has three central topics, Well-being, Value, and the Public Good. Colleagues in the Faculty conduct research relating to these topics separately, but also to the ways in which they are interrelated. The niche research area is centrally concerned with how (cross-)cultural and creative practices bring value to the lives, not just of individuals, but entire communities, thereby playing a constitutive role in the building of good societies and in producing the public good. A thriving government-funded Liberal Arts university that is expected to produce research with relevance to society, HKBU offers a fertile environment for imaginative research on the benefits that culture and creative practices bring to the world. Among other things, colleagues in the Faculty of Arts are interested in the contributions of music to the quality of a life over time, in the role of creative writing in the context of trauma and therapy, in the value of prayer, and in the effects of creative practices on solidarity and the social bond in the context of diverse societies and amongst marginalized communities.

Structure and Role of the Faculty Niche Research Area

Six sub-themes (Performance Studies; Chinese and Cross-Cultural Health Humanities; Framing Public Culture; Creativity, Self, and Society; Minority Studies/Marginalized Populations Studies; and Anthropocene Studies) provide the structure for the niche research area, with each sub-theme being linked to an interdisciplinary research group. To facilitate interdisciplinarity, each group has an anchor and co-anchor from different departments. All research postgraduate students in the Faculty of Arts are encouraged to join at least one research group and thus the FNRA plays an important role in the development of research talent. The activities of the research groups include the development of team-based grant proposals, discussion of individual grant proposals, presentations of work in progress, and workshops with researchers from the group’s local and international networks. A map of external engagements (for example with research centres and community organizations) informs the activities of each research group, enabling both impact and the development of local and international research projects of significant scope and scale.