Canada Research Chair in Hong Kong Studies
Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies, Department of Asian Studies
Co-curator and co-organizer, Asian Independent Cinema Showcase
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, and more.
With a background in Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Sinology, and Sinophone Studies, Dr. Wu has published on a wide range of cultural topics –including, but not limited to, spectatorship, postcolonialism, cultural icons, creative industry, and human-non-human relations – in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2018), Global Media and China (2020), Journal of Chinese Cinemas (2020), Asian Cinema (2022), and Cultural Studies (2024); and book volumes such as Hong Kong Keywords (2019), Concepts: A Travelogue (2022), Sinophone Utopias (2023), and Digital China (2024).
Her first monograph The Hangover After the Handover: Places, Things and Cultural Icons in Hong Kong (Liverpool University Press, 2020) 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).
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), Screen (2023), and Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2024).
Dr. Wu’s ongoing research on the jianghu (rivers and lakes) concept in Sinophone cinema, literature, and culture has been published in Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature (2012), Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture (2018), and HKU Journal of Chinese Studies (2023). She is currently working on her second monograph with a focus on the jianghu imagination in Hong Kong popular culture.
Dr. Wu also wrote for Critical Asia Archives (2021), the European Association of Taiwan Studies (2022), and Asian Studies Review (2023), and contributed two bilingual articles (in Chinese & English) to the exhibition “Soundtrack of Our Lives: Joseph Koo x James Wong x the Rise of Cantopop” 曲詞印記：顧嘉煇 x 黃霑 x 粵語流行曲 organized by Tai Kwun in Hong Kong in 2024.
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 and documentary 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.
In addition to conventional scholarship, Dr. Wu actively engages in knowledge mobilization in the community and maintains a media presence in Canada and beyond. Dr. Wu is one of the recipients of the UBC Public Humanities Award in 2024.
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