31 July 2018

HSMC has great pleasure to announce the appointment of Professor Tam Kwok-kan as the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (SHSS) with effect from 1 August 2018.

Professor Tam was the Chair Professor and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) since 2007. At the OUHK, he developed many new programmes that created niche areas of teaching in the Humanities and Social Sciences, such as the BA/BFA programmes in creative writing, film production, advertising design, animation film and cinematography, and MA programmes in Chinese literature, cultural industries management, and cultural heritage studies. He also set up the Research Institute for Digital Culture and Humanities in 2014 and the Tin Ka Ping Centre of Chinese Culture in 2015, and served as their founding Director.

A renowned academic, Professor Tam has an outstanding track record in teaching, research and higher education administration. He was Professor-Reader in English and served various administrative roles at The Chinese University of Hong Kong before he joined the OUHK. He is an international leading scholar in Ibsen studies, and is the current Head of the International Ibsen Committee, University of Oslo, Norway. He is a Foundation Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. He has published numerous books and more than a hundred articles on Ibsen, Gao Xingjian, comparative literature, modern drama, Chinese film, and world Englishes.

Professor Tam received his PhD and MA in Comparative Literature from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA and his BA (Hons) in English from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He worked as a Fellow at the East-West Center, Honolulu, after he received his PhD. He has been visiting professor and visiting research fellow at Stockholm University (Sweden), Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), Sophia University (Japan), Tokyo University, and National University of Singapore.

HSMC welcomes Professor Tam in his leadership role. Professor Tam will introduce new concepts and new programmes of teaching and research that will bring SHSS to new heights of achievements.