Three projects in which faculty members of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) serve as Co-Principal Investigators receive over HK$11.6 million of grant under the One-off Collaborative Research Fund Coronavirus Disease and Novel Infectious Disease Exercise 2020/21 (One-off CRF COVID-19 and NID Research Exercise).
As with the regular Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) administrated by the Research Grants Council (RGC), the One-off CRF COVID-19 and NID Research Exercise looks for project teams pursuing interdisciplinary, collaborative goals across disciplines and/or across universities, with a view to enhance the research output of universities in terms of the level of attainment, quantity, dimensions and speed.
CityU is the coordinating university of the project titled “Hong Kong Insolvency and experts in Restructuring Law and Policy in Times of COVID-19 and Beyond”, which is a joint study of experts on public policy, law, accounting and business at CityU and the University of Hong Kong. Public Policy Professor Linda LI Che-lan serves as Co-Principal Investigator of this project. The other two projects, titled “(Mis)communication, Trust, and Information Environments: A Comparative Study of the COVID-19 ‘Infodemics’ in Four Chinese Societies” (of which Media and Communication Professor Christine HUANG Yi-hui and Assistant Professor Dr HUANG Guanxiong serve as Co-Principal Investigators) and “Protecting Older People from Loneliness during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Other Novel Infectious Disease Pandemic” (of which Social and Behavioural Sciences Associate Professor Dr Dannii YEUNG serves as Co-Principal Investigator), will see the cooperative effort between communications and social sciences academics from four other universities.
Receiving this grant represents the commitment of the experts at CLASS to conduct high standing interdisciplinary research in health-related issues from various humanities and social sciences perspectives, and provide innovative and promising solutions for the society. It is also the vision of the College’s One Health research cluster of the College, which has been established in alignment with CityU’s strategic plan to identify One Health as one of the overarching research areas.
This additional funding of HK$150 million was announced in May 2020 to call for applications, given the huge impact on people’s livelihood in Hong Kong and around the world brought by the rapid and unrelenting spread of COVID-19. Research related to COVID-19 and other novel infectious diseases, in any facet and discipline, were considered. The extra support encourages the UGC-funded universities to conduct more research to address the impact of COVID-19 and NID, and explore solutions that can help mitigate the health, social, economic, environmental and other impacts. It is hoped that the results of these research studies can better prepare people around the world for future epidemic and diseases.
