Dr BANERJEE, Bidisha    博士
Associate Head / Associate Professor
Department of Literature and Cultural Studies
Contact
ORCiD
0000-0002-5974-1896
Phone
(852) 2948 6010
Email
banerjee@eduhk.hk
Address
10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong
Website
https://pappl.eduhk.hk/rich/web/person.xhtml?pid=86817&name=BANERJEE, Bidisha
Scopus ID
8636343500
Research Interests

postcolonial studies, globality and transnationalism, diaspora and exile, postcolonial feminist fictions and theory, cultural studies, film studies and visual culture

Teaching Interests

Dr. Banerjee teaches courses in postcolonial literature and gender and popular culture. 

External Appointments

Dr. Banerjee is currently serving as an Editorial Board member (2015-18, currently serving second 4 year term, 2019-23) for Gender and Education.


She acts a s a reviewer for the following journals:

Public Culture, Continuum, Atlantic Studies, Feminist Media Studies, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews and Postcolonial Text.


She has been invited to review book manuscripts for Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge.

 

Dr. Banerjee's recent Knowledge Transfr activities include:

“One City One Book Hong Kong 2019” EdUHK’s CRAC funded project, a community wide reading programme initiated by CPCH. Director. 

Moderator for a conversation with Professor Kathleen Ahrens and Dr. Zoran Poposki at the opening of “A Foreign Land, A New Home: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival” Art Exhibit. January 5, 2019. Hong Kong Arts Centre. Launch event of One City One Book HK 2019. 

Moderator for discussion with Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha about her short story collection Apple and Knife. Hong Kong International Literary Festival. November 3, 2018

 "Community Service: Working in the Humanities, for Humanity: Reading and Discussion.” Cha reading Series. Dec. 6, 2018. Kubrick. Participant.

 Presentation entitled “Learning to Read, Learning to See: The Use of Graphic Novels to Enhance English Language teaching” delivered at the World Book Day Fest organized by the Education Bureau (EdB) Hong Kong. April 21st, 2018

 Panel Moderator for “Are we home yet? Families and Asian Diasporas.” Panel participants: Min Jin Lee, Jade Chang and Sreedhevi Iyer. Hong Kong International Literary Festival. December 11, 2017.

 Moderator for Book Launch of Accomplice to Memory by Q.M. Zhang. May 23rd, 2017. GROWHOUSE, Central, Hong Kong. http://www.festival.org.hk/accomplice-to-memory-q-m-zhang-book-launch/

 Leading a panel discussion on Girish Karnad’s play “Boiled Beans on Toast” following a reading of the play by members of Pants’ Theatre. August 22nd at Eslite Books, Causeway Bay and August 23rd 2016 at Broadway Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei.

 Leading a panel discussion on Helen Tse’s novel Sweet Mandarin, following a production of the novel’s adaptation by Pants’ Theatre. November 7th, 2016 at Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

 “Sex and Sexuality in Literature.” A public lecture as part of “The English that you didn’t Learn in School” Series, organized by the English Language Education Department at HKIEd. March 19, 2016 at HKIEd.

Personal Profile

Dr. Bidisha Banerjee is Associate Professor of English in the Literature and Cultural Studies Department at the Education University of Hong Kong. She has a M.A. in English from Claremont Graduate University and a Phd from the University of Iowa. She won the Jeffrey Campbell Fellowship which enabled her to teach in the Gender Studies department at St. Lawrence University in New York. Prior to joining EdUHK, she also taught at Chinese University and City University (both in Hong Kong) as an academic visitor.  Dr. Banerjee's research and teaching interests include postcolonial studies, globality and transnationalism, diaspora and exile, postcolonial feminist fictions and theory, cultural studies, Hong Kong urban culture and film studies. Her book Traces of the Real: The Absent Presence of Photography in South Asian Literature, is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press in 2021. She has presented her work widely at conferences in Europe, Asia and the US. Some of her work on South Asian diaspora has been published in journals like Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Text and Journal of Postcolonial Writing. She won the 2011-12 Excellence in Teaching Award in the Faculty of Humanities and was nominated for the Hong Kong wide 2013 UGC Teaching Award. Dr. Banerjee is the Director of the Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities (CPCH), a faculty level research centre in the Faculty of Humanities at EdUHK (www.cpch.hk). She served as the director of 我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong, a community wide reading project and Hong Kong's first One City One Book initiative in its inaugural year, 2019 (www.onecityonebook.hk).

Research Interests

postcolonial studies, globality and transnationalism, diaspora and exile, postcolonial feminist fictions and theory, cultural studies, film studies and visual culture

Teaching Interests

Dr. Banerjee teaches courses in postcolonial literature and gender and popular culture. 

External Appointments

Dr. Banerjee is currently serving as an Editorial Board member (2015-18, currently serving second 4 year term, 2019-23) for Gender and Education.


She acts a s a reviewer for the following journals:

Public Culture, Continuum, Atlantic Studies, Feminist Media Studies, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews and Postcolonial Text.


She has been invited to review book manuscripts for Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge.

 

Dr. Banerjee's recent Knowledge Transfr activities include:

“One City One Book Hong Kong 2019” EdUHK’s CRAC funded project, a community wide reading programme initiated by CPCH. Director. 

Moderator for a conversation with Professor Kathleen Ahrens and Dr. Zoran Poposki at the opening of “A Foreign Land, A New Home: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival” Art Exhibit. January 5, 2019. Hong Kong Arts Centre. Launch event of One City One Book HK 2019. 

Moderator for discussion with Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha about her short story collection Apple and Knife. Hong Kong International Literary Festival. November 3, 2018

 "Community Service: Working in the Humanities, for Humanity: Reading and Discussion.” Cha reading Series. Dec. 6, 2018. Kubrick. Participant.

 Presentation entitled “Learning to Read, Learning to See: The Use of Graphic Novels to Enhance English Language teaching” delivered at the World Book Day Fest organized by the Education Bureau (EdB) Hong Kong. April 21st, 2018

 Panel Moderator for “Are we home yet? Families and Asian Diasporas.” Panel participants: Min Jin Lee, Jade Chang and Sreedhevi Iyer. Hong Kong International Literary Festival. December 11, 2017.

 Moderator for Book Launch of Accomplice to Memory by Q.M. Zhang. May 23rd, 2017. GROWHOUSE, Central, Hong Kong. http://www.festival.org.hk/accomplice-to-memory-q-m-zhang-book-launch/

 Leading a panel discussion on Girish Karnad’s play “Boiled Beans on Toast” following a reading of the play by members of Pants’ Theatre. August 22nd at Eslite Books, Causeway Bay and August 23rd 2016 at Broadway Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei.

 Leading a panel discussion on Helen Tse’s novel Sweet Mandarin, following a production of the novel’s adaptation by Pants’ Theatre. November 7th, 2016 at Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

 “Sex and Sexuality in Literature.” A public lecture as part of “The English that you didn’t Learn in School” Series, organized by the English Language Education Department at HKIEd. March 19, 2016 at HKIEd.

Research Outputs
Scholarly Books, Monographs and Chapters
Chapter in an edited book (author)
Bidisha Banerjee and Mindy Blaise (2017). Data Provocations: Disappointing, Failing , Malfunctioning. Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Teija Loytonen, and Marek Tesar, Disrupting Data in Qualitative Inquiry: Entanglements with the Post-Critical and Post-Anthropocentric (49-60). New York: Peter Lang.
Banerjee, B. (2007). No nation woman: The diasporic woman's quest for home. In M. Lai, & S. P. Kumar (Eds.), Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature (pp.168-179). India: Pearson Education.

Journal Publications
Publication in refereed journal
Banerjee, Bidisha (2023). Spectrality and thanatic ethics of care in Atlantique and Biutiful. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2023.2190914
Banerjee, Bidisha, Judith Misrahi Barak and Thomas Lacroix (2023). Introduction: Thanatic ethics: The circulation of bodies in migratory spaces. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2023.2190917
Banerjee, Bidisha (2022). “Alphabets of flesh”: Writing the body and diasporic women’s autobiography in Meena Alexander’s Fault lines. English Studies, 103(8), 1210-1227. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2022.2105025
Banerjee, Bidisha (2021). Picturing Precarity: Diasporic Belonging and Camp Life in Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, --, 1-18.
DeCoursey, Matthew and Banerjee, Bidisha (2020). Three readers of Ibsen in Hong Kong: A longitudinal study of self-reflection. English in Education, xx, 1-15.
Bidisha Banerjee (2020). Banerjee, B. (2020). Defiance and the speakability of rape: Decolonizing trauma studies in Mahasweta Devi's short fiction. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature.. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature., 2020 (0), 1-18.
Bidisha Banerjee (2018). An unapologetic feminist response. Research in Education, 101 (1), 17-24.
Bidisha Banerjee (2017). "Looking Beyond “buildings of chrome and glass”: Hong Kong’s “uncanny postcoloniality” in photographs of Tin Shui Wai.". Visual Studies., 32(1), 60-69.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2016). Kinship between ‘Companion Species’: A Posthuman Refiguration of the Immigrant Condition in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52(4).
Banerjee, Bidisha (2016). "Creating a 'well-fitted habitus': Material Culture, Home Making and Diasporic Belonging in Shaun Tan's The Arrival.". Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics., 7(1), 53-69.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013). Utopian Transformations in the Contact Zone: a posthuman, postcolonial reading of Shaun Tan and John Marsden’s The Rabbits. Global Studies of Childhood, Vol. 3, Issue 4, 418-426.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013). What lies within: Misrecognition and the uncanny in Hong Kong's Cityscape. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 14, issue 4, 519-537.
Blaise, M. Banerjee, B. Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. & Taylor, A (2013). Editorial: Researching the naturecultures of postcolonial childhoods. Global Studies of Childhood, Vol. 3, Issue 4, 350-354.
Banerjee, B. & Blaise, M. (2013). There's something in the air: Becoming-with research practices. Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies, ifirst doi:10.1177/15327086134, xx-xx.
Bidisha Banerjee (2011). The Native as “(An)Other” Self: Colonial Anxiety in Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King.. The Kipling Journal, 85 #344, 7-20.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2011). “Exoticized Heroine or Hybrid Woman? Diasporic Female Subjectivity in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala.. Asian Cinema, 22 #2, 417-432.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2010). “Diaspora’s Dark Room: Photography and the Vision of Loss in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Story ‘Hema and Kaushik.’”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature., 45.3, 443-456.
Bidisha Banerjee (2010). “Identity at the Margins: Queer Diasporic Film and the Exploration of Same-Sex Desire in Deepa Mehta’s Fire”. Studies in South Asia Film and Media, A, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 19-39.
Bidisha Banerjee (2009). “Revisions, Reroutings and Return: Reversing the Teleology of Diaspora in Sunetra Gupta’s Memories of Rain.. Postcolonial Text, A, Vol. 5, Issue 2, 1-15.
Bidisha Banerjee (2009). “Traveling Bodies: Gender, Nationalism and Diasporic Identity Formation in Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach”. Asian Cinema, Vol. 20 #2, 18-38.

Conference Papers
Invited conference paper
Bidisha Banerjee (2017, April). “Becoming Udayan: Photography and the Devastating Doubling of Brothers in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland.”. Invited lecture delivered at St. Lawrence University (Department of English), Canton, NY.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2015, July). “Creating a ‘well-fitted habitus’: Material Culture, Home Making and Diasporic Belonging in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.”. Department of English, French and German Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Oviedo, Spain., Oviedo, Spain.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2015, June). “Finding Gauri: Photography and a Reappraisal of Diasporic Womanhood in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland.”. Research Centre on Migration Studies, Department of English and Philology, University of Huelva, Spain., Spain.
Banerjee, B. (2008, April). Silencing the westerner: First person narration in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference of International Drama/Theatre and Education Association: Studies in English, Izmir, Turkey.
Refereed conference paper
Banerjee, Bidisha (2018, July). “Stepping Through Doors: Rethinking Magical Realism as Postcolonial Discourse in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.”. CISLE (Centre for the International Study of Literatures in English), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Banerje, Bidisha (2017, October). “The Necessary Expulsion of the (M)Other: Immigrant Matricide and Abjection in Ann Hui’s Film Night and Fog.”. Nation, Gender and History: Asian Cinemas in Perspective. An Intl. Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2017, July). “Allo-portraits of a Mother: Photography and Diasporic M(o)therhood in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland.”. Border Crossings: Translation, Migration and Gender in the Americans, the Transatlantic and the Transpacific., Universite Bordeaux, Montaigne, France.
Bidisha Banerjee (2017, April). “Posthuman Utopias: Inter-species Assemblages and Migranthood in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.”. Utopia After the Human Conference, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2016, July). “No breasts. Two dry scars…”: The Metaphor of Rape and Postcolonial Trauma in Mahasweta Devi’s “Behind the Bodice.”. 17th ACLALS Conference, 2016. University of Stellenbosch, South Africa., Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2016, June). “Looking Beyond “buildings of chrome and glass”: Questioning Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity in Derrick Chang’s photographs of Tin Shui Wai. Sixth Asian Conference on Cultural Studies (ACCS), 2016., Kobe, Japan.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2015, June). “Spaces of Hope Amidst the Monumental: Citizenship, Protest and Urban Space in Postcolonial Hong Kong.”. V Lisbon Consortium, Lisbon.
Blaise, Mindy and Bidisha Banerjee (2014, April). There’s something in the air: Becoming-with research practices.”. “There’s something in the air: Becoming-with research practices.” American Educational Research Association Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as part of the symposium, ‘Various un/thinkable possibilities of ‘data’’, Philadelphia, PA. USA.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013, July). Learning Beyond our Human Concerns: An Exploration of the Post-human in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. ALEA/AATE National Conference - Brave New World: English and Literacy Teaching for the 21st Century., QUT, Brisbane, Australia.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013, June). What Lies Within: Misrecognition and the Uncanny in Hong Kong’s Cityscape.. ICAS 8: East West Crossroads., Macau.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013, June). “Who will save us from the rabbits?” A Posthuman, Postcolonial Reading of Shaun Tan’s The Rabbits.‟. Transcultural Imaginaries: Making New, Making Strange. A Moving World’s Conference., NTU, Singapore.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2013, April). “’No breasts, two dry scars…’: The Metaphor of Rape and Postcolonial Trauma in Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Behind the Bodice.’”. Seventh International IDEA Conference: Studies in English., Pamukkale University, Denizli, Turkey.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2012, October). Kinship Between ‘Companion Species’: A Posthuman Refiguration of the Immigrant Condition in Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’. Research Seminar: Researching Postcolonial Childhoods across Hong Kong, Australia, and Canada., Hong Kong.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2012, March). Caricatures with Integrity: Subverting Anglo Indian Stereotypes in Indian Cinema. Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference, Hong Kong.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2011, November). “Living in No Man’s Land: Notions of Home, Belonging and the Double Displacement of Anglo Indians in Bow Barracks Forever.”. “Other” Indias: The Richness of Indian Multiplicity., Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canaries, Spa.
Banerjee, Bidisha (2011, September). “Politicising the Pictorial: A Postcolonial Reading of Images in Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.”. 11th Biennial European Association for Studies on Australia (EASA) International Conference. Crossing the Borders: Reality, desire and Imagination in Australian, New Zealand and the Pacific lives, literatures and cultures., Presov, Slovakia..
Banerjee, Bidisha (2011, June). “Exoticized Heroine or Hybrid Woman? Diasporic Female Subjectivity in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala.". Biennial Conference of the International Journal of Arts and Sciences., Prague, Czech Republic.
Bidisha Banerjee (2010, June). “Understanding the Self as the Other: Geopolitics and the Dramatic Monologue in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”. ACLALS Conference, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Nicholas YB Wong, Bidisha Banerjee (2010, April). "Embattled Lives in Marginal Space: Portrayals of Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong Cinema". Cinema and Landscape Conference, University of Sheffield, UK.
Bidisha Banerjee (2009, September). “Memory and Mourning: Photography and the Vision of Loss in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.”. Paper presented at "Glocal Imaginaries Conference", University of Lancaster.
Banerjee, B. (2009, May). Capturing impermanence, finding the self: The trope of photography and diasporic identity formation in Jhumpa Lahiri's story "Hema and Kaushik". Paper presented at the Gesellschaft fur die Neuen Englischsprachigen Literaturen (GNEL) Conference 2009, Munster, Germany.
Banerjee, B. (2009, May). Will she, won't she? Gender, violence and the female suicide bomber in Santosh Sivan's film "The Terrorist". Paper presented at the Experiencing Gender Conference, Ⅳ International Interdisciplinary Conference, Huelva, Spain.
Banerjee, B. (2008, February). Framing lesbian desire: Alternative viewing practices in queer cinema. Paper presented at the Lesbian Lives XV: Writing Lesbian Culture: Theories and Praxis, Dublin, Ireland.
Banerjee, B. (2007, July). Revisions, reroutings and return: Reversing the teleology of diaspora in Sunetra Gupta's Memories of Rain. Paper presented at the Rerouting the Postcolonial Conference, Northampton, UK.

All Other Outputs
Other outputs
Banerjee, B. (2008). Reviewer of journal articles for Postcolonial Text, Gender and Education and ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and reviews.

Projects
Spaces of Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Narrative
The refugee crisis of the 21st century is one of the most challenging the globe has faced; today more than an estimated 68 million people are displaced from their homes. Postcolonial and diaspora studies have been slow to respond to the need to reconceptualize theories of migration in the context of the new age of migration. The traditional articulations of diasporic identity formation are lacking in theorizing refugee identities characterized by statelessness, violence and precarity. “Spaces of Precarity” addresses this lacuna in diaspora studies by drawing attention to the spatialities of refugee migration as delineated in several refugee graphic narratives. It considers the liminal and transitory spaces of migration such as refugee camps, borders and detention centres as well as the open seas often depicted in refugee graphic narratives. This project argues that the depiction of these spaces in graphic literature, offers us new opportunities to theorize migration and diaspora based on reconfiguring spatiality.
Project Start Year: 2022, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha null

 
Cultivating Students’ Global Perspectives through Course Design with an Emphasis on the Affective Aspect of Learning
The global challenges of our century underscore the need for students to be able to value diverse cultures and perspectives, empathise and work with others dramatically different from themselves and solve problems that transcend national borders. While the academic departments at EdUHK are being strongly encouraged to enhance their courses to cultivate students’ global perspectives, some lecturers remain uncertain about how to achieve this goal meaningfully. This TDG addresses an urgent need of empowering lecturers to improve their understanding of global perspectives and facilitate their reflection on appropriate course design and successful delivery. Over the past decade, the "affective turn" (Clough, 2007) in social sciences and the humanities has resulted in educational applications that show how emotional responses and sensory perceptions can maximize affective engagement in the classroom (e.g. Cavanagh, 2016). This project proposes that the integration of such an approach with internationalisation of the curriculum can effectively cultivate students' global perspectives, which includes not only knowledge of different cultures, societies and global issues but also affective attributes conducive to intercultural empathy, efficacy, and tolerance. The project will develop an instructional framework for cultivating students’ global perspectives. It will demonstrate the impact that a due emphasis on the affective aspect of learning has on students' development of intercultural competence (including knowledge and attitudes). Finally, the project will develop case studies and other resources highlighting the participating lecturers’ best pedagogical practices. This cross-disciplinary project will include team members from nine departments across all three faculties, including five Teaching Award recipients, together with two external Co-Ss from North America specialising in cultural psychology and global citizenship education.
Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): BUCHTEL, Emma Ellen Kathrina 蒲安梅, CHATELIER STEPHEN ERIC , YU, Kwan Wai Eric 余君偉 (BANERJEE, Bidisha null as Co-Investigator)

 
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
The American ship the Sunny South carried “a freight of seventy dead Chinamen” from San Francisco to Hong Kong on May 15th 1855. It was a part of the large scale repatriation of human remains, fueled by the desire of Chinese emigrants to be buried in their native village. This paramount desire is not unique to the Chinese. A home burial encapsulates a widely shared perception of home among emigrants. Death imbues the meaning of home and therefore the meaning of what it is to be an immigrant. And yet, despite this willingness to be buried in the homeland, the life course of immigrants can take unanticipated trajectories and burial in the place of settlement instead becomes a reality. Others face untimely deaths as they undertake treacherous migration journeys. Literature, film and visual art is replete with discussions of thanatic themes related to migrants. Thanatic Ethics attempts to study questions of the circulation and repatriation of migrant bodies and the representation of these themes in literary and cultural texts.
Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha null

 
Investigating Hong Kong Students' Aspirations for the Future
In recent months, school students have organized school strikes, class boycotts, human protest
chains, joined front-line protests, been arrested (30% under 18 years) and shot (2 students; 14
& 18 years), with more than 300 school students involved in the PolyU siege. For other students, the protests disrupted their schooling and their relationships with family, peers and teachers. The longer-term impact on their aspirations, futures and sense of belonging/connectedness to Hong Kong is unknown.This project seeks to map Hong Kong adolescents’ (15-18 years) aspirations and views on the resources/capital needed to achieve their aspirations for the future, and how Hong Kong schools and society can help.
Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): HALSE CHRISTINE MARGARET (BANERJEE, Bidisha as Co-Investigator)

 
Picturing Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Novel
Following critics like Simon Gikandi (2010) and Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2000) who have theorized the refugee as a new kind of Other that challenges global cultural flows, “Picturing Precarity” calls for an alternative migration framework based on spatiality as well as a more individualized and humanized visual frame for depicting the refugee. These I wager, can be found in the refugee graphic novels of the last decade. In particular, this project considers the depiction of “nonplaces” such as the open sea, detention centres and refugee camps as well as the utopian spaces of the imaginary homelands in refugee graphic novels, arguing that these offer us a new migration framework based on reconfiguring spatiality.
Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
“Learning to Read, Learning to See: Using Graphic Novels in the English Language Classroom” Received January 2019
This is a Quality Education Fund (QEF) project funded by the Education Bureau (EdB) of Hong Kong. It is a visual literacy project based on using graphic novels in the English Language classroom.
Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
“One City One Book Student Ambassadors.”
This grant has funded the training and activities of the One City One Book Student Ambassadors.
Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
“One City One Book: Exploring Across Cultures and Around the World.”
This grant was received to support 我城我書 / One City One Book Hong Kong and its internationalization in the wider Asian region beyond Hong Kong.
Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
“One City One Book Hong Kong, 2018-19: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.”
This project funds Hong Kong's first ever One City One Book, a community wide reading initiative with research, teaching and knowledge transfer elements.
Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
"Traces of the Real: The Absent Presence of Photography in Postcolonial and Diasporic Literature"
Diasporic literature with its attendant themes of loss, longing, mourning and trauma, has obvious resonances with photography. By bringing together the multidisciplinary fields of postcolonial literature, migration studies and photography, this project aims to overcome the disciplinary divisions between these fields and shift the debate on the interactions between these sister arts. It attempts to study not the interaction of the written word and the visual image, but rather the written image which functions as a photographic metaphor to enhance the themes of the literary text.
Project Start Year: 2016, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
Good Teaching Practice – Incorporation of Development of Generic Skills into Course Teaching at Higher Education Context
The present project is related to Community of Practice (CoP). It aims to promote good teaching practice with the focus of incorporating the generic intended learning outcomes (GILOs) in course teaching and develop a peer sharing atmosphere on campus. It engages our colleagues in sharing and exchanging their teaching experience through an online platform.
Project Start Year: 2015, Principal Investigator(s): CHENG, May Hung May 鄭美紅 (BANERJEE, Bidisha as Team Member)

 
Racialization of the Asian Female Domestic Worker in Cyprus
Given the complicated history of colonialism as well as a problematic postcolonial present in Cyprus, I am particularly interested in studying the racial othering of the Asian foreign domestic worker in Cyprus and comparing it with the kind of othering that happens in Hong Kong of migrant workers from the same parts of the world. While my study of the data collected on Hong Kong has shown the existence of human rights’ abuses of the domestic workers (ranging from underpayment of wages to physical abuse), in the case of Cyprus, I wish to analyze the issue of racialization of the other and study whether Cyprus’ problematic colonial past and postcolonial present (discussed above) as well as its attempts to conform to its obligations of EU harmonization (while still struggling with the “Cyprus problem”), has any bearing on the racialization of the Asian domestic workers. I also wish to study the comparative racial politics with regard to the Asian domestic worker that exist in Hong Kong and Cyprus.
Project Start Year: 2010, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
Developing Students’ Affective Attitude in Secondary EFL Classrooms in the PRC
The study investigates the beliefs, design and practices of secondary school teachers from the PRC when implementing the affective dimension of the English language curriculum, and finds out the extent the pedagogy and approaches suggested in the curriculum for developing students’ affective attitude are employed in teachers’ lessons. Twelve teachers from the 3-week Inservice Course for Guangdong Secondary School English Teachers held in the HKIEd in July 2009 will be identified and invited to take part in the study in which a combination of data collection procedures within the qualitative paradigm, for example, document analysis, interviews and observations, and the study of task materials, e.g. lesson plans and samples of student work, will be used.
Project Start Year: 2010, Principal Investigator(s): LI, Ka Wo, Benjamin 李家和 (BANERJEE, Bidisha as Co-Investigator)

 
“Migrant Workers in Hong Kong.”
The purpose of this project is to connect classroom teaching with the real world and to educate students and heighten their awareness on issues of migration.
To create a database (audio and video files) of material on migrant workers in Hong Kong and upload these materials on to a website for dissemination amongst students.
Project Start Year: 2010, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE, Bidisha

 
In-service Programme for Guangdong English Teachers 2009
A total of 40 teachers and researchers from different parts of the Guangdong province participated in the programme, which was held at HKIEd from 6 July 2009 to 24 July 2009. This was the 10th Programme jointly orgainised by the Guangdong Education Bureau, the EDB and the Department of English of the HKIED since this kind of collaboration started in 1999. The major aim of the Course was to further develop the professionalism of these teachers and researchers through reflecting upon English language teaching theories and practice. The participants completed six modules on the Programme and participated in "Fun with English" - activities conducted by Graduate English Teachers from CLE - which aimed at enhancing their English proficiency. During the programme the participants stayed in our Jockey Club Student Quarters to experience the life as full-time students on campus for three weeks.
Project Start Year: 2009, Principal Investigator(s): LI, Ka Wo Benjamin 李家和 (BANERJEE, Bidisha as Team Member)

 
Tin Shui Wai On Screen
In recent years, Hong Kong cinema has been overwhelmed with pan-Asian co-productions (mainly with China), resulting in several epic and martial arts blockbusters. However, such film portray a landscape outside the city and the authentic image of the city has been somewhat neglected, if not entirely erased from onscreen depictions. In 2008 and 2009, three small-budger independent films were released. These films served to revive the importance of portraying Hong Kong itself through their depictions of the alternative cityscape of Tin Shui Wai, a dislocated locale from the city hub and a town (mis)located on the borders between China and Hong Kong. In Lawrence Lau's Besieged City, Ann Hui's The Way We Are (2008) and Night and Fog (2009), we find the recurrence of themes such as urban violence, moral degradation, the collapse of traditional family structures and the uneasy existence of dislocated individuals in an urbanized, marginal space. In City and Cinema, Barbara Mennel argues that studying film and cities allows us to analyze particular locales with the emphasis on the "operation of power and the struggle of power". This project therefore, aims to explore how characters in these three films are disempowered and struggle to exist, hoping to re-vision and revisit the notion of metropolitanism that has always been associated with commercial Hong Kong cinema.
Project Start Year: 2009, Principal Investigator(s): BANERJEE Bidisha