CityU’s sociologist faculty members have performed strongly in the former two rounds of territory-wide Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Featuring outstanding academic merits and research impacts, our research outputs were ranked 3rd among all local institutions both in RAE 2014 (2007-2013) and RAE 2020 (2013-2019). Such success has indicated that we have achieved a high level of academic reputation in the national and international sociological communities.  

Our sociologist faculty members are committed to innovative research methods and service models that further the department’s motto of ‘Embracing Humanistic Values and Social Justice’. Maintaining close relations with the cognate social science disciplines in the department (namely, social work, counselling and psychology), faculty members possess a particular focus on vulnerable groups, including migrants, sex workers, women, youth and elders in the context of larger social structures and government policies in Chinese societies.  

Faculty members have also been active in securing competitive research grants, including RGC-General Research Fund and Public Policy Research Fund. They consistently receive research grants awarded by different bureaus/departments of the HKSAR government and local NGOs.  

Our research success has been realized in regular publication of papers in high-quality journals, and books in reputed publishers specifically in two sociological domains.  

Migrants and Mobilities: Faculty members conduct pioneering research on peasant-workers, sex workers, forced migration and civil society development for migrants in China. Specific topics include Chinese sex workers, the mode and timing of immigration for work, and migrants from the Three Gorges Dam area of China. Our articles were published, for example, in Sociological Quarterly; Journal of Contemporary Ethnography; Sociological Inquiry; The China Quarterly; Journal of Contemporary China; China Journal; China: An International Journal; Journal of Contemporary Asia; and Modern Asian Studies.  

Social Capital and Impact Assessment: This domain evolves from the department’s former Social Capital and Impact Assessment research unit. It consolidates the colleagues’ reputation for territory-leading research into social capital and the assessment of social impact. Specific themes include the role of social capital in stopping youth violence; the role of social impact practitioners; social capital and migrant women; sustaining social trust and volunteerism; and evaluating eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, artificial intelligence and computational social science. Our articles were published, for example, in Social Science Research; Social Indicators Research; International Journal of Intercultural Relations; Journal of Child and Family Studies; and Environmental Impact Assessment Review; International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; Social Behavior and Personality; Health and Quality of Life Outcomes; PLoS ONE; IEEE Access; Complexity; IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems; IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering; and IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics. British Journal of Sociology,  Dialogues in Human Geography; Psychology of Violence; Journal of Contemporary China; China Quarterly.

We also published books that have provided new insights into academic research, including The Transition Study of Post-socialist China: An Ethnographic Study of a Model Community (World Scientific Pub.); The New Middle Class in China, Consumption, Politics and The Market Economy (Palgrave Macmillan); Understanding Chinese Society: Changes and Transformations (World Scientific Publisher); Occupational Health and Social Estrangement in China (Manchester University Press); and Ethnographic Inquiry and Lived Experience: An Epistemological Critique (Routledge); and China’s Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity, and Criminal Justice (University of Toronto Press) ; Unlocking the Red Closet: Necropolitics, Male Sex Workers, and Tongqi (New York University Press).

Our faculty members also serve as Editors of academic journals and book series, such as the Journal of Comparative Asian Development, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, Bandung: Journal of the Global South, and Routledge Studies on Margins of Development. We also serve the community by conducting consultancy research for NGOs and government departments.