Date: 25th November, 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Venue: Faculty Conference Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong
Registration is required. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- For HKU members (HKU Portal login is required): https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=103740
- For non-HKU members: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=103740
Faculty career development is an important matter, and one that should be approached as early in a faculty member’s career as possible. Indeed, it would be an advantage to begin thinking about these matters in graduate school, as one chooses one’s dissertation topic, and gains the early research and teaching experience that will shape one’s early career as a faculty member. The Humanities and Social Sciences pose particular challenges in research direction and evaluation, given their greater thematic range and more subjective evaluation when compared to the more quantitative criteria and definitive research pathways of many STEM disciplines.
In this session, I will speak about some of the principle considerations which I believe should guide early career faculty in their career development planning. In research, these include thematic coherence; impact; collaboration; and intellectual independence/leadership. In teaching, some considerations include (again) coherence; range; curricular leadership; and feedback. Recognising the range of teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, it would not be possible to be prescriptive about the different expectations and pathways, but I hope to provide principles which should be generally useful in the different disciplines therein.
Robbie B. H. Goh has been Professor and Provost of the Singapore University of Social Sciences since 2021. Prior to that he was Professor at the National University of Singapore, where he held various leadership appointments including Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, Deputy Director of the Asia Research Institute, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has published mainly in the fields of Indian Anglophone literature, Christianity in Asia, and the semiotics of popular culture. A literature scholar by original training, much of his work also seeks to incorporate the methodologies of other disciplines such as linguistics, human geography, history and religious studies. Among his publications are the books Christopher Nolan: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2022, Bloomsbury Academic); Language, Space and Cultural Play (2020, Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Lionel Wee); Protestant Christianity in the Indian Diaspora (2018, State University of New York Press); and Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore (2005, Hong Kong University Press). He has also authored more than 100 academic articles, in a wide range of edited volumes and journals including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Urban Studies, Asian Studies Review, Social Semiotics, and others.
