Date: 27 March 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm (HK time)
Venue: Learning Lab (RRS321, 3/F, Run Run Shaw Building, Main Campus, HKU)
Speaker: Prof. Austin Strange, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics & Public Administration, HKU
Facilitator: Dr. Jessica To, Lecturer, TALIC, HKU

This seminar will discuss a teaching and learning approach that intentionally blurs classroom experiences and student involvement in academic research. The speaker will share his experiences with this approach in several undergraduate and graduate social sciences courses at the University of Hong Kong. The discussion will cover whether and how this approach might be adapted and deployed in other classroom settings. It will also introduce a proposed strategy for significantly scaling the approach into a social science research laboratory model that can be applied to a variety of settings and dramatically increase student research opportunities and improve learning experiences through innovative course design that actively integrates direct student research involvement.

Austin Strange is an Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. He teaches and researches international relations, international development, and Chinese foreign policy. He is the author of Chinese Global Infrastructure (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and co-author of Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China’s Overseas Development Program (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In 2022 Austin was awarded the University of Hong Kong’s Early Career Teaching Award. From 2023-2025 he is a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program, and previously he was a fellow at the Wilson Center and the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program. Austin earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.A. from Zhejiang University, and a B.A. from College of William and Mary.