RESEARCH FOCUS

The field of medical humanities emerges from the transforming dialogues between medicine and society, negotiated between the distant past and aspired futures. With a vision to integrate international expertise across linguistics, history, philosophy, economics, policy studies, and the medical sciences, the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine (CHM) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) advances the interdisciplinary dialogue with a focus on healthcare communication and technology. This focus speaks to the two formative axes in medicine in society: the transformations in medical technology and in communicative practices. The study of medical humanities concerns the technological conditions and societal development of medicine. This spans from the pharmaceutical innovations to changing clinical practices, and from strengthening communal care to illuminating humanistic perspectives on the management of transhuman technologies such as AI agents. 

 

Led by linguistic and public health expert Director Professor Olga Zayts-Spence, the CHM builds its research and impact around five strategic topics: healthy aging, mental health, gender and sexuality, genetics and genomics, and culture in healthcare. This is supported by rich methodological expertise in ethnography, discourse analysis, and corpus studies. We address healthcare across the dimensions of health as lifelong processes, communal wellbeing, and societal transformation. Our team engages in collaborative projects across East Asia, the Gulf region, Australasia, Europe, and the Americas, leading active cross-sector outreach in synergy with governments, corporates, and NGOs. Rooted in Hong Kong, the CHM takes local and regional initiatives in promoting humanistic healthcare and contributes to the national and global research in navigating paths forward. See our research projects.