Anthropology Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Anthropology was first taught at CUHK in 1973 under the Board of Studies in Sociology.
From 1977, the Anthropology Section of the Sociology Department began to offer a minor programme. Anthropology was officially established as a department in 1980, offering both major and minor programmes to undergraduates. In 1987, an M.Phil. programme in Anthropology was introduced, and in 1992 a full-fledged Ph.D. programme was started. The M.A. taught programme in Anthropology was introduced in
1998, and an M.A. in the Anthropology of Chinese Societies was introduced in 2000. The Department continues to develop new courses, to address the issues of cultural contact, ethnic conflict, and cultural identity, particularly as related to Hong Kong and the contemporary world as a whole. The Department also invites senior anthropologists of international reputation to visit the Department for seminars and to teach regular courses. Over the last several years, distinguished anthropologists who have taught in the department include Prof. Sidney W. Mintz from Johns Hopkins University, Prof. Edward M. Bruner from the University of Illinois, Professors James L. and Rubie S. Watson from Harvard University, Prof. Helen F. Siu from Yale University, and Prof. Morikawa Makio from Doshisha University in Kyoto. Each year, many distinguished anthropologists visit the department to give lectures and meet with students and faculty; in 2000-2001, these visitors came from institutions such as Harvard, the Australian National University, the University of Tokyo, the Sorbonne, Copenhagen, Stanford, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Japanese National Museum of Ethnology. Faculty and student interests cover a range of anthropological fields, from gender to economic development to ethnicity. Current faculty and student research includes cultural identity, urban neighborhoods, women and the construction of gender identity, Chinese popular religion, China's minorities, food culture in Asia, culture and tourism, and the prehistoric cultures in South China. Asia's economic development and urbanization, the increase in migration and resulting contact of different cultures, and the emergence of a global culture all point to the growing need for anthropology's cross-cultural, holistic approach to understanding human behavior. CUHK offers a particularly stimulating environment for the study of anthropology: it has a cosmopolitan department in a dynamic global city. The department is committed to comparative research that seeks to explain the enormous complexity and diversity of human life in today's world. The Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes in anthropology at CUHK are especially designed to use Hong Kong's advantageous geographic position and CUHK's excellent academic environment for cultivating an anthropological way of seeing and understanding the world. Through consultation with teachers, students acquire systematic training in the field and develop the ability to conduct independent research on current sociocultural issues. The programme offers annual summer field trips; recent trips have been to Japan, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, Yunnan, and Guangxi. The programme also has collaborative research and exchange programmes with overseas universities. In addition, there is an interdisciplinary Gender Studies Programme housed in the department. Some graduates of the department choose to stay on for postgraduate studies, while others have pursued further training abroad. Many successfully enter widely varied fields of employment, including museum curating, journalism, government service, teaching, and international trade.
進入二十一世紀，本系不斷發展新課程，探討文化接觸、族群衝突以及身份認同等與香港社會以及全球息息相關的課題。本系經常邀請國際知名的資深人類學家到本系執教或主持座談會，如約翰．霍普金斯大學Sidney W. Mintz 教授、伊利諾大學Edward M. Bruner 教授、哈佛大學James L. Watson 教授和Rubie S. Watson教授、及澳洲國立大學Andrew Kipnis教授等。近年，任教本系暑期課程的包括三藩市州立大學的Bernard Wong 教授及華盛頓大學的Ann Anagnost教授。
What kind of music emerges in conditions of war, exile, and violence? Does it help people cope, provide distraction, or document lived experience? Drawing on case studies from World War II, this seminar explores how both amateur and professional musicians respond to violence through creative expression, examining works produced during conflict and in its immediate aftermath.
30/04/2026
"The World is Big, But It Has No Place for Us: Music and Violence" A Seminar
What kind of music emerges in conditions of war, exile, and violence? Does it help people cope, provide distraction, or document lived experience? Drawing on case studies from World War II, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel–Gaza war, this seminar explores how both amateur and professional musicians respond to violence through creative expression, examining works produced during conflict and in its immediate aftermath.
14/04/2026
📢 Join us for the annual FYP Forum! 🎓
Come support our final-year students as they present their research. A great learning opportunity for all UG students — see what goes into an FYP and get inspired for your own journey!
📅 Date: 23 April 2026 (Thu)
⏰ Time: 13:00–17:30
📍 Venue: NAH12, CUHK
🔗 Programme rundown: see link in comment
See you there! 👋
14/04/2026
Congratulations to Prof. Christina Cheung!
13/04/2026
In this week's Friday Seminar, Dr. Yukun Zeng will explore how anthropologists can establish accountability for wisdom through discussion of the ethnographic case of dujing. All interested are welcome!
Title: The Promise of Wisdom and the Aftermath of Dao: Grassroots Confucianism and the Anthropology of Wisdom
Speaker: Yukun Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Date: Friday 17 April, 2026
Time: 1:00-2:30pm
Mode: In-person
Venue: Room 213, Humanities Building, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Details: https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/event/zeng_wisdom/
08/04/2026
Prof. Adam Drazin from University College London will give a talk on "Extreme Fashion: how the feeling of digital fabrics evokes collaborative futures". Welcome to join!
Speaker: Adam Drazin (Associate Professor of Anthropology at University College London)
Date: Monday 20 April, 2026
Time: 11:00am
Mode: In-person
Venue: Room 401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
02/04/2026
Join us for a talk by Prof. Joshua Ehrlich on "Books and Their Readers in the Early Modern Indian Ocean World"!
Time: April 16 (Thurs) | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Venue: Room 401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
Registration link in comment.
01/04/2026
Is colonial heritage negative? Debating heritage discourses and selective interpretation of Kulangsu, China
Speaker: Dr. Ran WEI (lecturer in Urban Studies, School of Public Policy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)
Date: April 14 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00-13:30
Venue: Room 401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
Language: English
Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13730437
31/03/2026
In the debut episode of CUHK Podcast, Professor Gordon Mathews and student Harry Zhang from the Department of Anthropology explore how cultural perspectives shape our understanding of life’s meaning, happiness and life after death.
Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko (New York) and historian Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto), bring to life long lost Yiddish songs of the World War II in this all-new concert and lecture program. Collected by Moisei Beregovsky and other scientists of the Kiev Cabinet for Jewish Culture, these previously unknown Yiddish songs were confiscated and hidden by the Soviet government in 1949, and have only recently come to light. They tell stories of how Soviet Jews became refugees in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, lived and died under the German occupation, used music to document N**i atrocities, fought in the Red Army, worked in the home front, and made sense of it all through Yiddish music. Created by Soviet Jewish women, children and men who never got to tell their stories, none of these songs were known until they were accidentally discovered in the basement of the Ukrainian National Library in the 1990s.
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