HKU puts arts to the forefront of reforms
The University of Hong Kong has appointed two internationally renowned scholars as chair professors to play a leading role in plans to develop its arts faculty.
The faculty's new dean Professor Kam Louie wants it to become the best in the world for east-west studies within six years through preparations for the introduction of four-year-degrees. A key plank of his plan is to strengthen research within the faculty.
The university is allowing the faculty to recruit an extra 23 professors over coming years at an added cost of $20 million a year to match the 25 per cent expansion in student numbers that will come with an extra year of university 'study.
It follows a shake-up of the faculty that has seen its 10 departments reorganised into six schools, with a new school of humanities comprising music, history, philosophy, fine arts, linguistics and comparative literature.
The faculty has appointed Professor Frank Dikotter, a specialist in modern China history from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, to fill a new chair of humanities. It has signed Professor Bill Ashcroft, a founding exponent of post-colonial theory in English literature and co-author of its defining tract The Empire Writes Back, as chair of English.
Professor Louie said: 'After an intensive global search, the faculty is very fortunate to have two internationally renowned professors. Their impressive expertise and ongoing research will no doubt further stimulate the exciting research into studies of the east and west.
'The run up to the four-year degree will be a period of consolidation in terms of students and the courses we run but expansion in terms of recruiting new staff and refining the research focus so that we can be the best in the world.'
He said Professor Dikotter's role would involve promoting research within the new school of humanities.
Professor Dikotter, who is researching China's great famine from 1959 to 1962, said there was a trend in the humanities for academics to be expected to 'teach, teach, teach and teach more'.
