COVID-19 Pandemic, Crisis Responses and the Changing World Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences

Simon Zhao Xiaobin is a Professor and Associate Dean of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the BNU-HKBU United International College (UIC). Previously, he worked at Hong Kong University as a founding Director of the International Center for China Development Studies. He specialises in economic geography, urban, regional and global studies and regularly carries out research in the broad areas of urban regional studies, geopolitics and economic development, spatial and global transformation, geography of international trade and finance, and development of international financial centers (IFCs). He is an editorial board member of four international journals and so far published more than 150 papers in international refereed journals and ISI (SSCI) Citation Journals, book chapters and consultative reports. Simon Zhao was a Member of the Central Policy Unit, HKSAR Government (Pan-PRD Panel). He chaired and co-lead various substantial academic research projects and providedconsultancy services to China’s national, provincial and local governments, as well as private sector. 

Johnston Wong, Professor in Social Work and Social Administration, started his career as a youth worker in Hong Kong. His early academic interests focused on youth and family work, branching out to psychological stress and unemployment. Recently his research covered areas of social work for older people, social indicators studies, healthy villages and cities, social laws in China, disaster social work and healthcare social work.  He received the International Crisis Intervention Leadership Award from ICISF and the Presidential Award from ACPA, other being recognized as one of the Outstanding Young Person back in 1990 by TOYPA. 

Charles Lowe, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Learning, Teaching, and Student Experience for the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and Associate Professor in English Language and Literature Studies, received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  His criticism appears in Reading Contemporary China Against the Grain: Imagining Communities published by Routledge and has been included in the collection, China and the Humanities: At the Crossroads of the Human and the Humane, published by New Directions in the Humanities, His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  He has been thrice selected as a Resident Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has been selected as a Resident Fellow at the Norman Mailer’s Writers’ Colony.  His fiction has been anthologized in a collection on literature on the electronic media. 

Edoardo Monaco, Associate Professor, directs the Globalisation and Development (GAD) as well as the Government and International Relations (GIR) Programmes at the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Beijing Normal University - Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (BNU-HKBU UIC). An Italian national with extensive international experience both within and beyond academia, his teaching and research interests concern sustainable development governance and the rise of the Global South, with particular regards to holistic development paradigms and their measurement, sustainable economic growth, diversification and inclusion. 

John Corbett is a Professor of English in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at BNU-HKBU United International College. He specialises in linguistics and literature, with a focus on the history and development of the literature and language of Scotland. He directed two major digital projects, the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech and the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (1700-1950). He has broad international experience, having worked in the UK, Italy, Russia, Brazil, and China.