News & Events

Departmental Seminar: Romeo’s Woes & Ophelia’s Dole: Performing Noble and Poisonous Deaths in Shakespeare

January 2, 2026

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Dear Colleagues and Students,

The Department of English cordially invites you to join our departmental seminar, Romeo’s Woes & Ophelia’s Dole: Performing Noble and Poisonous Deaths in Shakespeare, to be organised on 15 January 2026 (Thursday).

In conjunction with the Shakespeare Drama Competition 2026, this seminar offers an exciting opportunity to elevate your interpretative and vocal performance skills. Dive into the dramatic intensity of Shakespeare’s most unforgettable and tragic scenes and bring them to life with confidence and power! Applications close on 23 February 2026—don’t miss your chance to be part of this celebration of Shakespeare’s enduring legacy.

Date:	15 January 2025 (Thursday)
Time:	3:00pm – 4:00pm
Venue:	A315, S H Ho Academic Building, HSUHK
Speaker:	Dr. Chloe Leung, Assistant Professor, Department of English
Registration:	Complete the online registration form to reserve a seat. Available on a first-come first-served basis.
Remarks:	1 iGPS unit will be awarded to undergraduate students who attend the seminar

Abstract

This one-hour seminar will train students to perform selected excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays, focusing on the dramatisation of death in Hamlet and Rome and Juliet. Students will analyse the excerpts and learn how to appropriately vocalise the plays’ tragic tone.

Bio

Dr. Chloe Leung holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, specializing in Modernist Literature. Her thesis investigates how modernist works (Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and Jean Rhys) deploy free indirect discourse to disentangle “illness” and “disability” from medical/scientific paradigms. Her latest article examines how un-speak-ability in Woolf moves away from an ableism that restricts sense-making intelligence. In addition to modernist studies, Dr. Leung is also interested in dance studies. She has examined how balletic movements contribute to Woolf’s representation of death in an article “A Rhapsody for Tuesday: Undercurrents in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931) and the Royal Ballet’s Woolf Works (2015)” (2022). Dr. Leung is currently an Assistant Professor at The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong.

For enquiries, please feel free to contact us at eng@hsu.edu.hk.

Book Launch: The Fairytale World of Hans Christian Andersen (安徒生的童話世界)

December 18, 2025

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The Department of English at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK) is delighted to invite you, together with your school’s teachers and students, to attend the book launch of The Fairytale World of Hans Christian Andersen. Please find the event details below:

《安徒生的童話世界》新書發布會

“The Fairytale World of Hans Christian Andersen” Book Launch

安徒生逝世150周年紀念出版 | 香港恒生大學師生聯手策劃

Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen’s Passing | Co-curated by Faculty & Students of HSUHK

活動詳情 Event Details

📅 日期 Date：2025年12月19日（星期五） | 19 December 2025 (Friday)

⏰ 時間 Time：下午3時至4時 | 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

📍 地點 Venue：香港恒生大學何善衡教學大樓龐熊少珠講堂（A315） | Pong Hong Siu Chu Lecture Hall (A315), S H Ho Academic Building, Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

專題講座 Seminar

《安徒生，我們共同的精神故鄉》
“Andersen: Our Shared Spiritual Homeland”
（講座以粵語進行 | Conducted in Cantonese）

內容包括 Highlights

新書介紹與主編分享 | Book Introduction & Sharing by Editors
安徒生童話的當代詮釋 | Contemporary Interpretation of Andersen’s Tales
互動問答環節 | Q&A Session
講者 Speakers

譚國根教授 – 香港恒生大學人文社會科學院院長 Professor Tam Kwok-kan – Chair Professor and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, HSUHK
曹穎寶博士 – 香港恒生大學英文系系主任 Dr Anna Tso Wing-bo – Head of the Department of English, HSUHK
江影玉博士 – 香港恒生大學英文系高級講師 Dr Amy Kong Ying-yuk – Senior Lecturer, Department of English, HSUHK
劉亮之博士 – 香港浸會大學講師 Dr Miriam L.C. Lau – Lecturer, Hong Kong Baptist University
何建業先生 – 作曲及作詞家 Mr Ho Kin-yip – Composer and Lyricist
林蔚藍女士 – 香港恒生大學英文系學生 Ms Lam Winola Wai-larm – Student, Department of English, HSUHK
雲縈女士 – 香港恒生大學管理學系學生 Ms Wan Ying, Scally – Student, Department of Management, HSUHK

主辦 Organizer

香港恒生大學英文系

Department of English, HSUHK

協辦 Co-organizer

中華書局（香港）有限公司

Chung Hwa Book Co. (Hong Kong) Ltd.

Winter in Kräftriket – Public Lecture by Professor Kwok-kan TAM

November 20, 2025

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The Department is pleased to announce that Professor Kwok-kan Tam, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (SHSS) and Chair Professor of English, will deliver a lecture as part of the “Winter in Kräftriket” series organized by the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Stockholm University.

Venue: Kräftriket, Stockholm University
Date: Friday 28 November 2025
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Location: Bio Grand, Sveavägen 45, Stockholm

This lecture forms part of an ongoing initiative to foster scholarly dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange within Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. We warmly encourage faculty members, students, and colleagues to attend and engage with Professor Tam’s insights.

For further information, please refer to the official event page: Winter in Kräftriket – Stockholm University

[ENG] Submission Call: Under a Hong Kong Moon—Chronicles of the Unseen

November 6, 2025

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Hello, HSUHK Students, Staff, and Hidden City Writers!

We are thrilled to let you know that there would be a precious opportunity to get published in our prestigious literary journal The Kaleidoscope Chronicle. The theme of the upcoming issue in 2026 is “moon.”

The moon has long been a silent witness to human longing, a solitary companion to poets from Li Bai to Percy Shelley. It is a symbol of the unreachable, the introspective, and the eternally cyclical. Hong Kong, a city perpetually resituating its identity with the rhythmic persistence of lunar phases, holds countless stories in its constant yet changing light.

The Kaleidoscope Chronicle is a literary journal proudly hosted by HSUHK’s Department of English. In 2025, its inaugural issue 2025: The Year of Hans Christian Andersen has marked a magnificent success in capturing HSUHK’s newest literary voice. To continue the creative spirit of HSUHK students and staff, our second issue is now inviting creative and academic works that are both mystically mundane and profoundly mysterious, which illuminate Hong Kong’s hidden narratives. From the saying that “the moon seen in a foreign land is rounder than seen at home” to the revised colloquial “the moon is always roundest when seen at home,” Hong Kong, like the moon herself, has witnessed the waxing and waning of loneliness and companionship. We invite you to explore this landscape and contribute your voice to an ancient yet modern conversation.

We welcome all types of creative works and academic writing related to or inspired by the “moon.”

We encourage narrative magic that builds immersive worlds where time and space become flexible. Submitted works can include, but are not limited to:

Short Stories & Novellas: up to 8 A4 pages, singled-spaced;
Memoirs & Creative Non-Fiction: up to 8 A4 pages, singled-spaced;
Poetry: up to 3 poems, 6 A4 pages in total;
Video Essays (which might dissolve boundaries between the personal and the mythological): 5-15 minutes;
Hybrid & Experimental Forms: as you can imagine;
Academic Essays & Reviews: 2,000-5,000 words for academic essays, or 1,000-2,000 words for reviews, acceptable formats include student essays or project papers that follow the MLA documentation style;
Artworks: photographs, drawings, paintings, cartoon illustrations, and any other related works.

Submission Guidelines:

Submit your work(s) to engjournal@hsu.edu.hk by 17:00, 31 January 2026. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Indicate your submission category, student number, name, degree programme and School in your email. If your works are in textual format, we will accept Word document only. If the works are images, we will accept JPEG files no larger than 3 MB.
Include a 100-word author/artist bio to introduce yourself.

FAQ

What are the incentives of the open call?

All selected writers will receive a complimentary copy of the beautifully printed journal. The e-journal will be registered with ISSN and DOI*, a credential that can significantly enhance your writing career. Your work will also be included in the permanent collection of the HSU library database.

*DOIs may only be applicable to certain articles.

Who will be reviewing my work?

All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board of The Kaleidoscope Chronicle, which consists of teaching staff from the ENG faculty.

When will I be notified of the submission result?

All selected works and unsuccessful submissions will be notified the latest by the end of June, 2026.

By weaving these threads together, The Kaleidoscope Chronicle offers a precious platform for you to retell a story under a Hong Kong moon or the other moons of your version, transforming personal intimacy into a transcendent, enduring light.

For any enquiries, please contact us at engjournal@hsu.edu.hk. We look forward to reading your chronicles!

Best regards,

Department of English

The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

eng.hsu.edu.hk

fb: fb.me/hsuhkeng

ig: instagram.com/hsuhk.eng

Shakespeare Drama Competition 2026

October 28, 2025

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Calling all actors and Shakespeare enthusiasts! We are thrilled to announce the Shakespeare Drama Competition 2026, a premier event where you can breathe life into the Bard’s most iconic characters.

This is your stage to showcase your talent, passion, and interpretation of timeless classics. Whether you’re a seasoned performer or new to the world of Shakespeare, we invite you to take part in this exciting challenge.

Competition Details:

Categories

Secondary Schools: Students aged 12 – 17 years old
Open Group: Individuals aged 18 or above

First Round (Online Submission)

Submit a 1–1.5-minute video recording of a monologue or dialogue from any Shakespeare play via this link: https://forms.office.com/r/Fh7GLm6Jid
The same monologue or dialogue must be performed in both rounds.
Submission Deadline: February 23, 2026.

Live Final

Shortlisted participants will perform their monologue or dialogue live at The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong on March 28, 2026.

Judging Criteria:

Interpretation and Understanding: Evidence of thorough preparation and deep understanding of the monologue or dialogue.
Vocal Delivery: Clear articulation, varied pitch, appropriate pace, and vocal clarity.
Performance: Effective acting choices, including purposeful movement and expressive facial gestures.
Character Portrayal: Convincingly conveying the character’s emotions, motivations, and personality.

Prizes:

Champion: HK$500 book voucher, award certificate and souvenirs
1st Runner-Up: HK$300 book voucher, award certificate and souvenirs
2nd Runner-Up: HK$200 book voucher, award certificate and souvenirs
Honourable Mentions: Award certificate and souvenirs

Visit our website for tips on preparing your performance.

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with Shakespeare’s timeless works and develop your performance skills!

For questions or more information, please contact eng@hsu.edu.hk.

We look forward to seeing your creativity and talent shine!

Departmental Seminar: When Sleeping Women Wake: A Conversation with Emma Pei Yin

October 27, 2025

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The Department of English cordially invites you to join our departmental seminar, When Sleeping Women Wake: A Conversation with Emma Pei Yin, to be organized on 11 November 2025 (Tuesday).

Date:	11 November 2025 (Tuesday)
Time:	3:00pm – 4:00pm
Venue:	CR002 Lecture Hall, G/F, Creative Humanities Hub, HSUHK
Speaker:	Ms Emma Pei Yin, Author of When Sleeping Women Wake
Registration:	Complete the online registration form to reserve a seat. Available on a first-come first-served basis.
Remarks:	1 iGPS unit will be awarded to undergraduate students who attend the seminar

Abstract

Emma Pei Yin will discuss her remarkable and harrowing debut novel with Dr Jay Parker. It tells the story of three extraordinary women—a mother, her daughter, and their maid—are each forced on a journey of survival during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II.

“A lushly romantic and impassioned story of women’s agency and resilience.”—Juhea Kim, internationally bestselling author of Beasts of a Little Land and City of Night Birds

At once monumental and intimate, When Sleeping Women Wake powerfully explores how ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things, and the unwavering hope that love can carry us through even the darkest of times.

Bio

Emma Pei Yin is an Australian Chinese writer and editor. She is the author of When Sleeping Women Wake, a historical novel set during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, exploring resilience, complicity and the cost of survival. The book has been published globally. She is also the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency that works with PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers, connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins. She has been featured in The Canberra Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Mekong Review and The Hong Kong Review. Emma is working on her second novel with her extremely barky dachshund, Lady, by her side.

For enquiries, please feel free to contact us at eng@hsu.edu.hk.

From Page to Screen: How English Literature Shapes Modern Entertainment

September 26, 2025

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Dr Jay Parker gave a talk, “From Page to Screen: How English Literature Shapes Modern Entertainment”, at Kiangsu-Chekiang College in Sha Tin on 19 September.

The talk described how Mary Shelley’s critical engagement with science through the lens of tragic tropes has evolved in modern cinematic adaptation. It focused on the ways in which the critique of science has changed from one of individual tragic over-reaching, into an engagement with the conflict between the popular and elite. Dr Parker explored how cinema, as a mass-media contrasted with the gothic novel, which emerged as a form of entertainment for the affluent and educated.

[ENG] Unpacking the Suitcase: Memory, Migration, and Identity with Olivia De Zilva

September 25, 2025

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What do we carry with us? And what do we leave behind?

The English Language Centre at The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong is honoured to host acclaimed Asian-Australian author Olivia De Zilva for a special talk on her poignant and darkly comic debut novel, Plastic Budgie (Pink Shorts Press, 2025).

Date: 9 October 2025 (Thursday)

Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Venue: Lecture Hall CR002, Creative Humanities Hub

Registration: Complete this online form to reserve a seat. Available on a first-come-first-served basis

Remarks: 1 iGPS unit will be awarded to undergraduate students who attend the author talk

Author Talk

Plastic Budgie questions how our memories and families form us in a way that is both unapologetically sentimental and eternally surprising.

Olivia was named after a lycra-clad singer her parents saw on Rage. As a child, she lost the ability to speak and spent a year barking like a dog. Her Gong Gong bought her a yellow bird in a shoebox from the Adelaide Central Markets. Her heart was broken by a guitar teacher after a school disco. She started university and learnt to run and travelled to Guangzhou for her cousin’s wedding.

In her brutally funny, genre-defying debut, Olivia De Zilva collects stories on shelves: neat coming-of-age anecdotes and sitcom characters trapped behind glass. Then she breaks it all apart.

Join us for an afternoon conversation led by Dr. Belle Ling from the Department of English to hear De Zilva’s delving into the interplay between memory and identity, in particular, themes on itching Y2K nostalgia, curses, glimpses of birds, diaspora, and the concept of “home.”

This event is a must for anyone interested in contemporary fiction, cross-cultural narratives, and the stories that shape who we are.

Bio:

Olivia De Zilva is a writer based in Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). Her novel Plastic Budgie was released in July 2025 by Pink Shorts Press. Her novella Eggshell will be released by Spineless Wonders in November 2025. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Guardian, SBS, The Saturday Paper, Mascara Literary Review and many other publications. Olivia’s writing has been shortlisted by the Richell Prize, The Kat Muscat Fellowship, The Deborah Cass award and recently, was the inaugural winner of the AAWP Novella Prize.

Author Website: https://oliviadezilva.com/

[ENG] A Date with the Moon in Me: 我和我的月亮有個約會

September 22, 2025

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The Department of English cordially invites you to join the upcoming workshop, A Date with the Moon in Me: 我和我的月亮有個約會 organized by the English Language Centre, on 2 October 2025 (Thursday).

Date: 2 October 2025 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00pm-6:00pm

Venue: CR219, Creative Humanities Hub

Registration: Fill in this form to reserve a place

Remarks: 1 iGPS unit will be awarded to undergraduate students who attend the workshop

“The moon weeping says

I want to be an orange”

Federico García Lorca

We live under the same moon, but does the moon see us the same?

More than 1200 years ago, Li Po imagined the moon and his shadow as his drinking companions. In Hong Kong, Lin Xi responds to the lyrics of Teresa Teng’s legendary love song, “The Moon Represents my Heart” (1977), by rewriting how the moon though “once represented somebody’s heart, the end was the same . . . the moon in the past was transformed overnight into the sun today” —this is sung by Faye Wong in “Once in a Blue Moon” (1999). While Lin Xi’s rendering sounds more sentimental, the “moon” in the poem of Wallace Stevens, an American poet in the 20th century, is more philosophical, that Stevens sees the moon as “a dream of pre-history” which leads to a paralinguistic state.

What is your moon like? What face do you think it wears?

Join Hong Kong illustrator Little Half to rediscover the moon within you, while Dr. Belle Ling from HSUHK’s Department of English will illuminate how literary art shapes our inner moon. In this workshop, you will be guided using water colouring and literary appreciation skills to explore the texture, temperament, and tonality of your unique moon.

Quota: 20 places, first-come-first-served

Workshop Fee: HKD20 (Payment method details will be provided in the confirmation email.)

*This workshop will be conducted in both English and Cantonese.

About Little Half:

Kathy Chan is a local HK illustrator who founded the Little Half Studio in 2016. In 2021, she was selected as one of the 2021 Finalist Illustrators at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy. Kathy’s creative works often revolve around the protagonist “Little Half” — a round-faced, slightly chubby girl transitioning from shyness to courage (Website: https://www.instagram.com/littlehalf602/)

Professor Kwok kan-Tam Co-Publishes Volume on Chinese Diasporic Writers and Artists

September 22, 2025

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Professor Kwok-kan Tam, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (SHSS) and Chair Professor of English, recently co-published an edited volume titled Chinese Diasporic Writers and Artists: Reimagining Identity and the Self Beyond and Without China with Lily Li.

This book presents new and original essays that capture the enigmatic and intriguing personal and imagined worlds of Chinese writers and artists in diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Including chapters on artist-writers such as Gao Xingjian, Dai Sijie, Ha Jin and Hong Ying, Tyrus Wong, and Shen Wei, the book explores personal cross-cultural experiences through their literary and other artistic works, reflecting on their cultural identity, their native home, and their new home, the past and the present. By writing, filming, and painting about their diaspora/diasporic experience, they are writing about their selves and the traumatic experience many of them have gone through in forgetting the past, forgiving the damage, and foreshadowing a future by re-visioning their selves. Their experience represents a generation’s quest for an identity of being Chinese but culturally distanced from China.

As a study of cross-cultural human experience through the lens of literature, film, and other arts, this book will not only appeal to students and scholars of Chinese diaspora studies, it will also appeal to those with an interest in Chinese literature, film, and culture.

For details, please visit: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003622253/chinese-diasporic-writers-artists-kwok-kan-tam-lily-li

Programme Information

Student Life

News & Events

Departmental Seminar: Romeo’s Woes & Ophelia’s Dole: Performing Noble and Poisonous Deaths in Shakespeare

Book Launch: The Fairytale World of Hans Christian Andersen (安徒生的童話世界)

Winter in Kräftriket – Public Lecture by Professor Kwok-kan TAM

[ENG] Submission Call: Under a Hong Kong Moon—Chronicles of the Unseen

Shakespeare Drama Competition 2026

Departmental Seminar: When Sleeping Women Wake: A Conversation with Emma Pei Yin

From Page to Screen: How English Literature Shapes Modern Entertainment

[ENG] Unpacking the Suitcase: Memory, Migration, and Identity with Olivia De Zilva

[ENG] A Date with the Moon in Me: 我和我的月亮有個約會

Professor Kwok kan-Tam Co-Publishes Volume on Chinese Diasporic Writers and Artists

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