by Jisu Bang

David Edmonds is a sociolinguist, specializing in social interaction and interpersonal communication. He currently focuses on healthcare communication, with a special focus on interactions between doctors and patients in different medical settings. David obtained his PhD from CUHK in 2020, after receiving his MSc and BSc from Victoria University of Wellington. 

You’ve done your PhD at CUHK, so you have been living in Hong Kong for a while now. How do you find Hong Kong and HKU overall? 

I’ve been in Hong Kong for over 6 years now. I really like Hong Kong, especially all that it has to offer in terms of academia. It offers fantastic funding opportunities and has a nice balance between research and teaching. Take out Covid-19, the city itself is also amazing – it has a perfect balance between the city and nature. 

HKU is fantastic. It has great funding for research and conferences. I also really like the way it organizes events that run between the faculty and students. For instance, the Sociolinguistics Reading Group and the collaboration between MAES staff and students. I really love how all these bridge the gap between the faculty and students, creating a nice research community. 

The interesting thing about HKU is that we have a good foundation in Sociolinguistics. Our research group HKU RIICH (Research and Impact Initiative on Communication in Healthcare) is part of this big international collaboration called the IC4CH (International Consortium for Communication in Health Care). We also have lots of connections with the HKU Medical Faculty and the Department of Social Work, enabling interdisciplinary work, which is fantastic. 

Could you briefly tell us about your area of research? 

I am doing a lot of different things. My main interest is obviously in Sociolinguistics and Healthcare Communication, trying to understand how people communicate in different healthcare settings, and  how they understand healthcare advice/diagnosis. At the moment, my research is kind of twofold: (1) focusing on the wellbeing of end-of-life care professionals; (2) and looking at new graduates entering the workforce in Hong Kong during Covid, trying to understand the new difficulties that they are facing. 

The way I am approaching my research is by interviewing people working in end-of-life care settings, asking about their experiences and medical wellbeing in relation to their work, since end-of-life care is obviously not an enjoyable place to work within the healthcare industry. So this is interview-based research, but it is still really valuable and offers many new insights. For instance, I have been interviewing end-of-life care workers during Covid, investigating how the pandemic has impacted their wellbeing. At first, we assumed that they would be depressed since it is a period of time where more people are dying. But interestingly, we have found that many interviewees were quite positive about their experiences and wellbeing. So one of the things that we try to achieve through our research is also to challenge the traditional understandings or narratives that we might have by examining how people actually experience certain events. 

The primary goal of our research is to use our findings to influence the healthcare industry. For instance, using our evidence-based research to create educational- or training-based resources/guidelines. Likewise for the project that involves fresh graduates in the workforce. This is part of a government-funded project. We have said that we would like to create online resources to help students entering the workforce in Hong Kong. The idea is to provide support for these graduates in need.  

What initially drew you to such a specific area of research – end-of-life care settings? 

I guess it was actually kind of personal. Both of my grandparents were in elderly-care facilities for a long period towards the end of their lives. I saw what they were going through, so I wanted to understand the end-of-life care settings. I’ve also always found the people working in these workplaces fascinating; the people who are actually working with patients day-in-day-out. So I think this is what initially drew me to this area of research. 

Could you also tell us about your research on gender? 

Another project that I’m working on with a colleague in the UK is on gender and language – how people talk about transgender people, how they refer to them, and how the transgender people themselves correct people’s misuse of pronouns. We have a lot of ideas around how transgender people view being called the wrong name or pronoun. By doing interview- and survey-based research, we try to understand how transgender people respond to the way other people talk to them. We have recently looked at the difference between how transgender people react to accidental misgendering and to deliberate misgendering. In terms of deliberate misgendering, we observed how the transgender people display offense and challenge it, examining the linguistic aspects behind these processes. 

What are your interests outside of academia? 

I enjoy listening to music and playing tennis. I also enjoy being with my partner, exploring Hong Kong and going out to dinner. 

What is your advice for future researchers? 

First of all, have a work-life balance. Unless you have deadlines, please don’t work on the weekend. You need to balance your mental health and your academic work. As I have found out during my PhD, you will get burnt out very quickly. Second, realize that academia is not the only option. There are plenty of jobs outside academia – different industries and government agencies. Another piece of advice is to be curious, not just about your own research, but also about what other people are doing. One of the most interesting things from my PhD was going to seminars about other people’s work, which wasn’t necessarily directly related to what I do. It is just nice to have your eyes opened to different things, and sometimes that can help you to think about your own research slightly differently. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.