Canada Research Chair in Hong Kong Studies
Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies, Asian Studies
Convenor, UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative
Helena.Wu@ubc.ca
Dr. Helena Wu is Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies at the University of British Columbia. She teaches and conducts research on Hong Kong cinema, literature and culture. She is the author of The Hangover After the Handover: Places, Things and Cultural Icons in Hong Kong (Liverpool University Press, 2020). In the book, she examines the manifestation of the local in colonial and post-handover Hong Kong through the lens of cultural icons such as Lion Rock, ‘King of Kowloon’ Tsang Tsou-choi and Sung Wong Toi (the Song Emperor’s Terrace).
With a background in comparative literature, cultural studies and sinology, Dr. Wu has published on the topics of Hong Kong cinema, culture, and media in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2018), Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture (2018), Hong Kong Keywords (2019), Global Media and China (2020), Journal of Chinese Cinemas (2020), Concepts: A Travelogue (2022), Asian Cinema (2022), and Asian Studies Review (2023). Dr. Wu also wrote for Taiwan Insight (2021, with Simona Grano), Critical Asia Archives (2021) and the European Association of Taiwan Studies (2022), and participated in the Association of Asian Studies Digital Dialogues (2022). Dr. Wu receives a Merit Award in the 2021 International Journal of Taiwan Studies (IJTS) Research Article Competition. She has contributed an article on healthy realism to the cinema section of the Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies (Brill) and is one of the contributors to the Taiwan Cinema entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Chinese Studies.
Dr. Wu’s ongoing research on the jianghu imagery in Chinese cinema, literature, and culture has been published in Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature (2012) and Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture (2018), and the HKU Journal of Chinese (2023).
In one of her latest projects, Dr. Wu explores how creative expression and audience activities affect cultural (industry) practices, the construction of identity and the relationship between content producers, distributors, and spectators by probing the (trans)formation of film, television and sport spectatorships in Hong Kong. Her latest articles on community screenings and translocal film production/distribution have been published by Asian Cinema (2022) and accepted by Screen (forthcoming).
Full profile:
asia.ubc.ca/profile/helena-wu/
UBC Media Profile:
experts.news.ubc.ca/expert/helena-wu/
Canada Research Chair profile:
www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=5611