Sidney C. H. CHEUNG (Chairperson & Professor, Ph.D. Osaka University) sidneycheung"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Sidney C.H. Cheung received scholarships given by Japanese Government/Monbusho (1984-94) for his undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes and his anthropological training in Japan. Currently he is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Anthropology as well as Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Studies. He has been doing research about freshwater fish farming in Hong Kong in order to understand the fishermen and their perspectives on environmental change, sustainable development and wetland conservation. Currently, he is working on an ongoing multi-site research project exploring the impact of the move of American crayfish from the U.S. to Asia and on the global consumption and production of crayfish in China, Japan, and the U.S. Besides academic publications, Cheung was co-hosting two 15-session hourly RTHK radio programme entitled 《港飲食、講文化 (Hong Kong Foodways and Culture)》 in 2004 and 《文化非主流 (Culture Unconventional)》 in 2005, through which he was able to bring anthropological perspectives to the audience. Again, some of his research findings were used for the RTHK documentary series of 香港故事 (Hong Kong Stories) such as [年年有魚] and [東江逆流] in 2008.

Languages: Cantonese Chinese, English and Japanese and Putonghua.

Gordon MATHEWS (Professor, Ph.D. Cornell University) cmgordon"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Gordon Mathews has written or edited books about "what makes life worth living in Japan and the United States," about "the global cultural supermarket" and the meanings of culture today, about the Japanese generation gap, about what it means to "belong to a nation" in Hong Kong and elsewhere, and about how different societies conceive of happiness. He himself is happy to be an anthropologist because the discipline enables him to investigate so many different kinds of interesting topics! However, all his work relates to the basic question of how individuals today find meaning and identity. Over the past several years, he has been doing fieldwork in Chungking Mansions, a high-rise structure in Hong Kong's tourist district where entrepreneurs from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa come to seek their fortunes, along with asylum seekers seeking refuge and backpackers seeking cheap accommodations. Chungking Mansions is perhaps the most cosmopolitan building in the world; he has counted 128 different nationalities in its guesthouse logs. He has been awarded a 3-year RGC grant to study Chungking Mansions and its global linkages, a project that has him staying in Chungking Mansions each week, and traveling to such countries as India, Georgia, and Uganda.

Languages: English, Japanese; Cantonese (basic), Spanish (basic)

TAN Chee-Beng (Professor, Ph.D. Cornell University) cbtan"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Tan Chee-Beng’s latest research explores “Returned Overseas Chinese” migrants from Indonesia who “returned” to mainland China and then in the 1970s remigrated to Hong Kong. In this project, he studies how these “Indonesian Chinese” fare upon resettling down in Hong Kong. Starting over again from practically nothing, some are very successful, while others encounter hardship. Prof. Tan also conducts research in an overseas Chinese farm (huaqiao nongchang) in Quanzhou among a Chinese-Balinese community of returned migrants who arrived in 1961. Through a process of reterritorialization, these people have re-established a Balinese-Chinese community in China, where even the local-born children speak Balinese and Indonesian food is commonly enjoyed. His research thus promises to problematize notions of acculturation, identity and cultural homeland.

Languages: English, Malay, Minnan (Hokkien), Putonghua

Joseph BOSCO (Associate Professor, Ph.D. Columbia University) josephbosco"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Joseph Bosco majored in Biology and Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and received his postgraduate degrees (MA, MPhil and PhD) at Columbia University in the City of New York. His first fieldwork was a summer MA project on deforestation in Panama. His PhD research examined cultural aspects of Taiwan’s rapid industrialization, focusing on the role of family businesses in rural development. He has also done research on Chinese popular religion, particularly on temples of the goddess Tianhou (also known as Mazu and TinHau). His most recent research project has been a study of the rise of consumerism in South China, focusing on the rapid adoption and rise in the use of shampoo. He has also recently been working on an online Wiki English-Chinese dictionary of Anthropology that is to be released soon. Prof. Bosco teaches a popular course entitled “Magic, Myth and the Supernatural” that examines the cultural creation of reality in phenomena such as ghosts, witchcraft, and UFOs.

Geographical Areas of Research: Taiwan, Mainland China, Latin America, Mediterranean Europe

Languages: English, French, Putonghua, Italian, Spanish; basic level facility in Cantonese, German, Hokkien

Tracey Lie Dan LU (Associate Professor, Ph.D. Australian National University) luliedan"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Tracey Lie-Dan Lu obtained her Ph.D. from the Australian National University. She has been receiving funding from the Research Grant Council and the HKSAR Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) to conduct archaeological research in South China and Hong Kong. Recently she has published two articles, one for an edited book about Mid-Holocene climate and cultural dynamics in Central and Eastern China, and another about natural resources and subsistence strategies in Hong Kong. From 2003 she has also been working on urban renewal and heritage conservation in Hong Kong and mainland China, and has published several papers on this topic. In 2008, Prof. Lu was interviewed by RTHK Channel III on the participation of the younger generation in heritage preservation in Hong Kong, as well as by Asian Television (ATV) on the Nanyue Kingdom in South China. Prof. Lu has received two awards with co-authors of the book Zengpiyan: A Prehistoric Cave Site in Guilin, published in 2003, namely the 2nd prize of the Biennial Research Award of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the 1st prize of the Research Award of the Institute of Archaeology in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is recently appointed as a member of the Antiquity Advisory Board of Hong Kong SAR.

Languages: Cantonese, Putonghua, English

Siumi Maria TAM (Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Hawaii) siumitam"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Siumi Maria Tam joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1989. Her research interests include cultural identity in social transformation, family and migration, and gender and ethnic relations. She has completed a pioneering study on mistressing across the Hong Kong-China border, and believes that the mistress-keeping behavior of Hong Kong men has to be understood in the specific cultural context of Hong Kong's colonial history and the identity politics with mainland China. Her most recent research is on the Nepalese community in Hong Kong. She looks at the interface between transnational migration, ethnicity, and gender, by studying the experience of three generations of Nepalese women. Another aspect of her research is on the change and continuity of tradition and selfhood among the Gurungs. She hopes that the study could be expanded to the understanding of other South Asian communities, and could contribute to eradicating social marginalization and ethnic discrimination in Hong Kong.

Languages: Cantonese, English, Putonghua

Saroja DORAIRAJOO (Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Harvard University) sarojadorairajoo"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Prof. Saroja Dorairajoo commenced her teaching in the Department as an Assistant Professor in Spring 2008. She has thus far taught courses on the Anthropology of Violence, Anthropology of Southeast Asia and the Anthropology of Ethnicity. Prof. Dorairajoo says that her own life experiences of growing up in multiethnic Singapore stimulated her interest in understanding how peoples of diverse cultures made meaning of their world. This interest led her to conduct fieldwork among the Bhojpuris of Singapore, the Orang Asli of Malaysia and the Malay-speaking Muslims of Thailand. Currently, her new research interests will focus on food panics, the food crisis and the organic foods industry. Prior to joining the department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she taught at the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.

WU Keping (Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Boston University) kepingwu"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Dr. Wu Keping joined the Department of Anthropology at CUHK as an instructor in September 2007. She was educated in Boston University (Ph.D. 2007) and Peking University (B.A. 1999). She has conducted fieldwork in both the United States and China. Her dissertation, titled "Channeling Charisma: Leadership, Community and Ritual of a Catholic Prayer Group in the United States" is an ethnographic account of the workings of a religious community in the suburbs of Boston. She is interested in the construction of charismatic leadership and the tensions between the hierarchical religious institutions and the highly individualistic religiosity of contemporary American society. Her recent research shifts the focus back to her native China. As part of a larger comparative project, she examines different religious traditions and groups that actively engage themselves in philanthropy and other types of social services. In this project, she pays attention to the issue of charismatic leadership, religious mobilization, gender and civil society. She has presented on topics such as spirit medium and market, religion and globalization, gender and lay Buddhists, etc. She teaches courses on gender, globalization, religion and anthropological theory.

Languages: English, Putonghua

WANG Danning (Instructor, Ph.D. CUNY) danningwang"at"cuhk.edu.hk

Dr. Wang Danning joined the Anthropology Department at CUHK as an instructor in August 2007. She received her Ph.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2002 and had been teaching and working in the New York region since then. Her research interests include urban studies, gender and family issues, human reproduction, corporate culture, and state/society relationships. Dr. Wang enjoys the department’s equal and open academic atmosphere. She is amazed at the wide geographic range that the Department covers, the diverse areas of interest explored each year, and the well-connected academic circles of the department. To her, moving to Hong Kong and joining the department has put her right in the centre of anthropological studies of Asia. Her future research plan is a follow-up study of a working-class neighborhood in Tianjin. The focus will be on intergenerational relationships and on privatizing the housing market.

Languages: Cantonese, English, Putonghua