In Depth: School of Humanities and Social Science

The School of Humanities and Social Science (SHSS) is the smallest of HKUST's four schools by size, yet one of its most research-intensive. It comprises the Division of Humanities and the Division of Social Science^※, spans more than 15 disciplines, and offers creative arts courses in music, writing and film.

Size (2024–25): 371 undergraduate students, 59 research postgraduate students and 339 taught postgraduate students — 769 in total^※.

One-line summary: In a university named for "science and technology", SHSS is both the principal provider of university-wide general education and the smallest yet most research-dense academic unit on campus. In Hong Kong's 2020 research assessment exercise it ranked first in the city for "world-leading" social science research and third in the humanities.

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# 1. History and Leadership

# 1.1 From "divisions" to a school

Both the social science and humanities strands trace back to the founding of HKUST in 1991^※, when the two divisions were established alongside the science, engineering and business departments as part of the University's story of "building a research university from zero". Of the four schools, the humanities and social sciences started out the smallest and were long cast by outsiders in the supporting role of "general education provider". But from the 2000s onwards the school steadily recruited faculty through open international searches, gradually turning "small" into "select".

# 1.2 The James Z. Lee years (2009–2018): bringing quantitative history to HKUST

A key leap in the school's research reputation is closely tied to the tenure of historian James Z. Lee, who served as Dean^※. Lee earned his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1983, taught at Caltech and the University of Michigan, and directed the joint Michigan–Peking University research institute. His work spans Chinese history, historical demography, comparative demography and historical sociology, and he is known for using large-scale genealogical and household-registration data to reconstruct social mobility from the Ming and Qing dynasties onward. He brought this "doing social science with massive historical datasets" approach to HKUST — an early expression of the school's quantitative orientation. Lee now holds the Chair Professor of Social Science (Ignatius Y. M. Ng Professorship) and holds joint appointments in both the Division of Social Science and the Division of Humanities.

# 1.3 The Ping Li years (from 2026): neurolinguistics and "the humanities in the age of AI"

The school's current Dean is the language and cognitive scientist Ping Li, who took office in February 2026^※. Before joining HKUST, Li was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he also held the Sin Wai Kin Foundation Professorship in Humanities and Technology and a chair professorship in neurolinguistics and bilingual studies; earlier he spent many years on the faculty at Penn State University. His research concerns the neural, cognitive and computational foundations of language. Under his leadership, the school has identified "ethics & AI governance, emotion in arts and literature, cross-cultural communication, and aging & the brain"^※ as its focal contemporary themes, arguing that critical thinking, communication and analytical skills become more important, not less, under the impact of artificial intelligence. The research profiles of the two deans — one quantitative historian, one neurolinguist — neatly chart the school's approach: "humanities subject matter, scientific method".

# 1.4 International partnerships

The school's internationalisation is no mere slogan. Early in Lee's tenure the school began building a transnational partner network: according to a 2009 university announcement, its plans at the time included collaboration with UCLA, six Beijing universities and the University of Virginia, plus new courses in music appreciation, a "Global China Studies" major and a research direction in energy and environmental policy^※. The fruits of that groundwork are visible today in the Global China Studies undergraduate major, exchange and joint-training pipelines, and the school's consistent pedagogical stance of "placing Chinese studies in a global frame". Under the current dean, Ping Li, the international focus has shifted further towards cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary frontier topics such as ethics and AI governance and aging and the brain^※, continuing the strategy of "small school, wide network".

# 1.5 Three-unit structure

By the school's own account, SHSS consists of three units: the Division of Humanities, the Division of Social Science and the Center for Language Education^※, spanning more than 15 disciplines. The Center for Language Education handles the university-wide teaching of English and Chinese; its scale and influence rival those of the two academic divisions. See Section 7 on university common-core teaching for details.

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# 2. Division of Humanities

# 2.1 Research and teaching areas

The Division of Humanities concentrates its research and teaching in four areas:

1. Linguistics — Chinese linguistics, second language acquisition, pragmatics and more
2. Literature, Film, and Media Studies — Chinese and English literature, Asian cinema, digital media and cultural theory
3. History and Anthropology — modern Chinese history, Hong Kong history, South China studies, visual culture and material civilisation
4. Philosophy and Religion — ethics, comparative religion, epistemology, political philosophy

# 2.2 Publications and research reputation

Faculty monographs are published by leading academic presses including Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press and Stanford University Press^※ — a mark of international scholarly recognition. This "monographs as the measure of a scholar" orientation differs from the science and engineering logic of "journal articles and citations as the measure", and helps explain why humanities departments are structurally under-represented in ranking systems that weight journal output heavily.

The division runs several visiting scholar schemes, including the Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholars Programme^※, which hosts humanities scholars from across Asia.

# 2.3 The humanities in research assessment

In the University Grants Committee's 2020 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2020)^※, the school's humanities overall placed third in Hong Kong for "world-leading research" (4*)^※, and its history unit ranked second in the city by share of 4* "world-leading" research^※. For a division barely three decades old, long perceived as "the humanities unit attached to a science, engineering and business university", ranking alongside the established arts powerhouses of HKU and CUHK at the top rating is a direct measure of its research density.

# 2.4 Creative arts and applied humanities

Beyond its four research areas, the Division of Humanities offers a range of practice-oriented creative arts courses open to the whole university — for HKUST engineering, science and business students, one of the few formal channels for arts training. Its music programme has staged composition classes and end-of-semester public concerts (such as the Spring 2026 Composition Class Final Concert and the HUMA Music Course Showcase Concert)^※, with photography exhibitions and other platforms for student work. The linguistics strand has its own distinctive texture: recent seminars have taken up classical Chinese philology topics including "general-purpose verbs" (泛义动词) and "self-movement verbs" (自移动词)^※, complementary to the Center for Chinese Linguistics's work on Cantonese and other dialects. These courses and seminars show that the division, alongside its university-wide general education role, maintains its own scholarly depth — it is no mere supplier of basic language and civilisation surveys.

# 2.5 Community engagement

The division reaches beyond the campus through Public Humanities Lectures, community conservation initiatives and service-learning programmes, extending the public impact of academic research.

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# 3. Division of Social Science

# 3.1 Founding and scale

The Division of Social Science was established with HKUST in 1991^※ and now counts about 30 faculty recruited through open international searches^※, spanning five disciplinary directions:

A faculty of around thirty is pocket-sized against social science departments that routinely number in the hundreds. The division's long-standing strategy is "don't aim for complete coverage — ensure every appointment produces research that international peers cite", concentrating its limited establishment in a few highly productive directions. This is the institutional reason its per-capita citation record has long led the field.

# 3.2 Research assessment rankings

According to the University Grants Committee's 2020 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2020)^※ — the comprehensive research quality evaluation of Hong Kong's eight UGC-funded universities:

• Social sciences and political science (including public policy, public administration and international relations): ranked first in Hong Kong for "world-leading" (4*) research^※
• Sociology and anthropology: ranked first in Hong Kong for "internationally excellent" (3*) research^※

A necessary caveat: RAE rankings compare the share of 4*/3* ratings among submitted outputs, not absolute numbers. This works to the advantage of units with small, concentrated submissions — the social science strategy of "winning through selectivity" playing out through the assessment's own lens. Discipline rankings and year-by-year list details are covered in Section 8 below.

# 3.3 Research orientation and graduate destinations

The division describes its research as "qualitative and quantitative social science with China as its principal reference point" — whether qualitative or quantitative, the subject matter largely returns to China and Chinese societies^※. This gives it a distinctive identity in the international social science world: not pure area studies, not context-free grand theory, but "first-rate methods brought to Chinese questions".

Graduate destinations offer a second mirror on the quality of research training. According to the division, its PhD graduates go on to academic posts internationally, while MPhil graduates largely proceed to top doctoral programmes in the US, UK and Australia^※. For a thirty-person division to keep funnelling its research students into first-rate international doctoral pipelines is the research reputation paying off on the talent-cultivation side.

# 3.4 Research centres

The school houses three major research centres:

1. Center for Chinese Linguistics^※ — research on Cantonese, Putonghua and Chinese dialects
2. South China Research Center^※ — the history, culture and society of South China
3. Global China Center^※ — multidisciplinary study of China in a globalised perspective

In addition, the independently operated Center for Language Education^※ provides language education services to the whole university, including English enhancement, Putonghua and other language courses.

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# 4. Undergraduate Programmes

The School of Humanities and Social Science currently offers two undergraduate majors:

# 4.1 BSc in Quantitative Social Analysis (QSA)

Launched in 2017^※, the Quantitative Social Analysis major is Hong Kong's first undergraduate programme built around quantitative methods at its core, training students to analyse social data and interpret and present results for business, government and non-profit settings. Core faculty come from all five disciplinary directions of the Division of Social Science^※, supplemented by cross-departmental methods electives.

Notably, QSA awards a BSc rather than a BA — no accident of naming. It pairs social-science problem-framing with hard skills in statistics, data analysis and programming, speaking directly to the recent employment demand for data-science talent, and dovetailing with the school's overall "humanities subject matter, scientific method" orientation. For students who want the social sciences without giving up quantitative skills, QSA offers a path between traditional sociology and data science.

# 4.2 BSc in Global China Studies (GCS)

Launched in 2011^※, Global China Studies is built on the ELITE education model (Elite, Interdisciplinary, Language-enhanced, Transnational, Experiential), training students to analyse China's frontier issues critically in global and 21st-century contexts, and — in partnership with the Division of Humanities — fusing humanities and social science perspectives.

The programme offers exchange and internship opportunities and maintains links with universities in mainland China and internationally. GCS's origins trace back to the international partnerships established under Dean James Z. Lee, when the school built ties with UCLA, the University of Virginia and several Beijing universities — the faculty and exchange base that made "teaching Chinese studies in a global frame" possible.

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# 5. Postgraduate Programmes

# 5.1 Research programmes

Note: MPhil students are normally admitted through the combined MPhil–PhD stream; the MPhil is not open to direct application.

# 5.2 Taught programmes

The MA in Social Science (MASS) is a one-year full-time taught programme offering interdisciplinary social science training^※ with a Hong Kong and Greater China perspective. Taught postgraduate students (339) form the school's largest cohort — a key source of outreach and income, and evidence of the "small school, wide outlet" operating model: a small core of faculty leveraging a one-year master's market serving Greater China research demand.

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# 6. Division of Public Policy (PPOL)

The Division of Public Policy is administratively close to the School of Humanities and Social Science but operates independently of it, and is generally regarded as a university-level interdisciplinary policy research unit. Its institutional lineage overlaps with HKUST's newer Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS); see Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) and the Division of Public Policy^※.

The division's research centres on four directions: science, technology and innovation policy; environmental policy and sustainability; social and urban policy; and China's development policy^※. This "innovation policy at the centre" stance is what distinguishes HKUST's public policy work from traditional policy schools: it puts "how technological shocks rewrite public governance" at the core, echoing the university's wider technological character. The division also houses the Institute for Public Policy (IPP)^※, which carries out policy research and public education.

Programmes:

• Master of Public Policy (MPP)^※: an interdisciplinary taught programme emphasising the impact of technology and innovation alongside professional skills
• Master of Public Management (MPM)^※: focused on public-sector leadership and management; one year full-time or two years part-time; tuition HK$185,000 (27 credits)^※
• MPhil/PhD in Public Policy^※: research-oriented, designed for scholars aiming at academic or policy-research careers; research specialisms cover science, technology and innovation policy, environmental sustainability, social change and China's development policy

The logic of the MPP: the Master of Public Policy takes "fully understanding the wide-ranging impact of technological innovation" as its core^※, integrating policy analysis methods with technology-governance issues and distinguishing itself from traditional policy master's degrees grounded in welfare or administrative law. The Master of Public Management (MPM), by contrast, leans towards the practical craft of management and leadership in the public sector. Together with the research-oriented MPhil/PhD, the three form a ladder of "methods training — practice management — academic research".

Case development: the Case Development Programme, launched in autumn 2017^※, has continuously produced teaching cases on public policy issues in Hong Kong and mainland China, serving courses and policy discussion. This local case library is a piece of infrastructure that moves policy teaching away from Euro-American case dominance and towards the governance realities of Greater China.

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# 7. Interdisciplinary Courses and University-General Education

SHSS supplies much of the humanities and social science content in the university-wide Common Core curriculum — general education courses in history, philosophy, language, culture and related fields serving undergraduates across all schools. SHSS also provides the route by which engineering, science and business students take humanities and social science electives. For the overall architecture of the Common Core, its credit requirements and the background to the four-year reform, see Academic Structure and the Common Core^※.

The hub role of the Center for Language Education: as one of the school's three units, the Center for Language Education serves not only humanities and social science students but also provides the compulsory English and Chinese courses for all undergraduates. HKUST is the most thoroughly English-medium (EMI) institution among Hong Kong's eight funded universities, and the only teaching-language exceptions ever approved under Senate policy are the Chinese language courses offered by the School of Humanities and Social Science^※ (taught in Putonghua or Cantonese; course codes carry the [PU]/[CA] suffix). In other words, SHSS is both the executor of the "English-speaking campus" policy and the holder of its only authorised loophole — placing the school's language teaching function at the structural centre of HKUST's language policy.

In a university dominated by science, engineering and business, general education is no marginal chore: it is the only institutional channel through which engineers, scientists and business students encounter humanities and social science training in four years. The school binds this function to its own high research density precisely so that general education never degenerates into a "credit-filling" side dish.

This arrangement also creates an uncommon tension: the same faculty must maintain international research competitiveness (as measured by RAE and QS rankings) while teaching introductory general education courses to thousands of non-humanities undergraduates — two tasks that do not always sit comfortably in the same workload. That the school manages both on so small a staffing base owes something to the Center for Language Education absorbing the heaviest language-teaching load, and something to the conscious alignment of general education topics with faculty research interests (Chinese studies, quantitative social analysis, language and cognition, and so on), keeping "teaching general education" and "doing research" on the same track rather than at cross-purposes. Understanding this arrangement is the key to seeing how SHSS can be the smallest of the four schools while playing two seemingly contradictory roles — research base and general education mainstay.

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# 8. Research Assessment and Subject Rankings

Beyond the RAE, the school's research reputation shows up in year-by-year international subject rankings. The table below summarises recent social-science-related positions (each figure applies to the specific year and specific list as given in the source; disciplinary boundaries differ between lists, so positions are not comparable across lists):

The year-to-year volatility is worth noting too, not just the triumphs. Taking THE Social Sciences as an example, the school ranked 51st globally in 2020, fell to 74th in 2021, then dropped to the 101–125 band from 2022^※. Such swings stem largely from the small sample of social science publications and method tweaks in the lists from year to year, to which a small unit is especially sensitive. A single year's rise or fall often reflects changes in methodology more than changes in strength, and should not be over-read. Reading the "long-term leadership in citation impact" line and the "fluctuating composite position" line together is the honest picture for this compact school.

Two more structural observations deserve to be read side by side. First, the school leads Asia over the long run in citation impact per faculty (first in Asia in both THE 2017 and QS 2018–19) — consistent with its "small establishment, high output" strategy, since citation intensity measures the impact of each paper and magnifies the advantage of a compact unit. Second, the school's composite subject positions (such as QS Social Sciences & Management at 54th globally) sit well below its citation-impact ranks. The gap is mainly because composite positions factor in faculty and student numbers, employer reputation and internationalisation — quantity-linked indicators that are the structural weakness of a thirty-person division. Grasping this discrepancy is how one reads the split performance of "a hugely research-dense but structurally small school" across different ranking methodologies.

Reading the RAE: why "first by share" carries weight. The Research Assessment Exercise is the University Grants Committee's (UGC) periodic evaluation of research quality at Hong Kong's eight funded universities^※, in which panels of subject experts grade submitted outputs against international standards on a scale of 4* (world-leading), 3* (internationally excellent), 2* (international recognition) and below. The RAE 2020 ranking metric compares each institution's *share of outputs rated 4* or 3* within a subject area, not the total volume of outputs. This means a unit with a small submission in which every item scores highly can beat much larger rivals on the proportional measure. The Division of Social Science's first-in-Hong-Kong 4* result in social sciences and political science with only about thirty faculty is exactly that assessment logic multiplied by its "compact establishment, high output" strategy. It also cuts the other way: an RAE "first" measures the density and quality of research, not the size of a department or its student numbers.

For HKUST's overall subject-ranking profile and methodology notes, see QS Subject Strengths^※ and Schools Overview^※.

Note: the figures above apply to the specific year and specific list as given in the source. QS and THE draw the boundaries of the same discipline differently, so positions are not comparable across lists. Before citing, please return to the original ranking page to verify the methodology for the year in question.

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# 9. SHSS's Place and Role in a "Science–Engineering–Business" University

HKUST is often seen externally as a "three-legged" university strong in science, engineering and business — and SHSS is indeed the smallest of the four schools by headcount: just 769 students enrolled in 2024–25, under a tenth of the School of Engineering. But this compactness sits in deliberate contrast with its research performance: the Division of Social Science took first place in Hong Kong for "world-leading research" (4*) in social sciences and political science in the 2020 RAE, the humanities placed third in the city overall in the same exercise with history second by share of 4* output, and Division of Humanities faculty publish monographs with Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford and other leading academic presses. Such results mark SHSS not as a decorative "general education unit" but as an academic body that is small in size and dense in research.

This "small but select" positioning also explains SHSS's dual role in the university's wider academic landscape. On the one hand, it is the principal supplier of the University Common Core, carrying the institutional function of giving science-, engineering- and business-background students their humanities and social science training. On the other, it is the academic home of distinctive undergraduate majors such as Quantitative Social Analysis (QSA) and Global China Studies (GCS), and of interdisciplinary policy-research structures such as the Division of Public Policy (PPOL). One might say that in a university named for "science and technology", SHSS acts both as the gatekeeper of general education and as an independent base for humanities and social science research. The two roles do not conflict; they reinforce each other. It is precisely because its research stands up that SHSS's general education courses escape the fate of marginal credit-filling.

The academic DNA of its two deans tells the same self-conception: the historian James Z. Lee brought quantitative analysis of vast historical datasets to HKUST, and the neurolinguist Ping Li has pushed the intersection of language, cognition and artificial intelligence to the fore. "Humanities subject matter, scientific method" has always been how this small school makes its way among the science, engineering and business giants.

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# Related Reading

• In Depth: School of Science^※ — HKUST's four science departments and one division
• Academic Structure and the Common Core^※ — where SHSS-taught common-core courses sit in the university's academic structure
• English-Medium Instruction and Language Policy^※ — the school's Chinese courses as the EMI policy's sole authorised exception
• Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) and the Division of Public Policy^※ — PPOL's interdisciplinary institutional lineage
• Schools Overview^※ — a panorama of HKUST's four schools and interdisciplinary units

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