Documenting Hong Kong's Cultural History in Video Games: A Diaspora Researcher's Insights

The Research Café is back for the 2024-25 school year!

To kickstart this year's Café, we will be collaborating with the Jackman Humanities Institute's Hong Kong-Canada Connections Working Group. Our first meeting of the school year will take place on Saturday, October 5, 2024, from 11 AM to 1 PM, featuring Poki CHAN, a PhD student in Fine and Studio Arts at Concordia University.

Poki's research focuses on innovative methods of preserving historical and cultural heritage through game design and educational entertainment technology. Her portfolio includes the Kowloon Walled City Reforge Project, which won the Gold Award (Student Group) in 2019 from the Hong Kong Game Development Association and was nominated for Best Student Work by the China Indie Game Alliance in 2018. Her work has been featured in prominent Hong Kong media outlets such as HK01, Ming Pao, and Commercial Radio.

In this session, Poki will share her experiences in the industry and insights on how the diaspora can use virtual heritage games to document and preserve Hong Kong’s cultural narratives from abroad. Her work challenges traditional views of historical representation and emphasizes the importance of personal stories in shaping our understanding of history.
Mitchell Ma, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, will serve as the discussant for the talk.

The Research Café is an initiative based at the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, aimed at uniting scholars interested in Hong Kong and Chinese Canadian research to encourage scholarly exchange and promote multidisciplinary dialogue.

If you wish to join us, please RSVP by sending an email to chk.library@utoronto.ca before Friday, October 4, 2024.