Undergraduate and Postgraduate Conference 2025
The Undergraduate and Postgraduate Conference 2025 was held on 26 May 2025.
In Chinese mythology, it is believed that Houyi climbed over ninety-nine mountains, traveled through ninety-nine deserts, and shot down nine suns to relieve his people from an adverse plague of heat. The number “9”, therefore, signifies this familiar ambition to overcome the impossible, the stubbornness of grit, and a determined mind. In 2025, we welcome the 9th edition of the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Conference. Not unlike Houyi, our graduating cohort this year, evident in the high quality of dissertations they produced, has undoubtedly survived their own mountains, deserts, and suns.
To honour their toil, we are thrilled to gather the pool of ideas that emerge from this year’s graduating cohort in both our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Four projects from literary studies are featured in the Undergraduate session, which engages with D.H. Lawrence’s politics of abjection, Freudian approach to revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo, Dogville’s discussion on Arrogance in the lens of Brechtian theatre, and a comparative study of H.C. Andersen’s and Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid. In addition to these, one linguistics project that investigates Singaporean and Hong Kong English is also featured in the undergraduate session.
Not only do the undergraduate papers showcase a diverse array of topics, our postgraduate students also reflect the breadth of knowledge and the spirit of creativity within HSUHK’s academic community. In the afternoon session, we present three literary and cultural studies projects, which include a psychoanalytic and narrative study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, a biographical approach to Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling, and a study of the Indigenous Land Rights and Sustainability in the Philippine Cordillera Highlands. In a parallel session, we also celebrate two linguistics studies that examine the implications on English language teaching through Complexity Dynamic Systems Theory and formative assessment mechanisms.
We concluded our conference with Dr. Anthony Huen’s (HKU), a local and award-winning poet, who has generously delivered a keynote speech on his recent work.
It is our hope that the UG-PG conference will become a place where our students and other researchers can meet annually to share the developments of their work in a friendly and professional environment. Huge congratulations to the presenters who have successfully made their debut as an HSU scholar!
