Wing Lam Michelle Chan

Supervisor: Jennifer Altehenger

My DPhil project examines post-war Hong Kong (1950s-1970s), using the lens of work and professions to probe social-cultural change amidst domestic industrial transitions and the internationalised Cold War. It centres the communication and creative industries of press, printing, advertising and design as key sites where consumer culture and mass media took shape. This examination includes the white collar work of editors and journalists, the technical work of pressmen, the evolving field of commercial art and advertising, and the emergence of design as a profession. Anchored in Hong Kong's context, the research brings together two subjects of enquiry: everyday labour in an industrialising urban society, and the expanding consumption of goods, print media and advertising in a globalising age.

My DPhil study is funded by the Clarendon Scholarship and the Magdalen College Graduate Scholarship in History, and my work is supervised by Dr Jennifer Altehenger. Also at Oxford, I developed my research interests during my MSt in Global and Imperial History and my BA in History and Economics. My masters work explored cultural production by Hong Kong Chinese businessmen throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and my undergraduate research investigated diglossia and political journalism in 1905 Hong Kong amidst a transnational boycott movement. My research thus adopts an integrated lens on production and consumption, highlighting everyday voices within Hong Kong's local and transborder contexts.