University of Hong Kong

This course examines various big data sources covering different urban aspects and the extensive information carried by big data. It looks at various urban dynamics, including but not limited to the everyday issues of housing, mobility, consumer markets, social
interactions, and environmental sustainability. 

This course examines the increasing capacity of open-source GIS in disseminating spatial data sets in non-conventional formats. It covers a showcase of diverse datasets and their potential values and hands-on practices about the uses of these datasets. 

This course examines China’s natural environment; its institutional, legislative and administrative frameworks in environment protection and nature conservation; and discusses the government’s strategies for environmental protection and sustainable development.

This course examines issues around drug use, supply, and associated criminal behavior from a social and subcultural perspective, understanding how some people's drug use is disproportionately framed as 'problematic.' It explores different frameworks and approaches to governing drug use and rehabilitation around the globe, as well as the future of drugs in our society by understanding how technology, media, and globalization shape the changing drug markets. 

This course examines problems and concerns relating to the laws, and ethical issues that affect journalists and the journalism profession. While the lectures and coursework focus on Hong Kong, they also examine key global developments.

This course examines the principles of systematics and phylogenetics and an appreciation of current trends and controversies. Current classification theories: phenetic systematics (classifications based on overall resemblances) and cladistics (evolutionary reconstruction). The species concept. Sources of taxonomic data: morphology & anatomy, biochemistry, chemistry, molecular biology, biogeography and ethology. Causes of taxonomic complexity: environmental factors; hybridization; breeding systems. Principles of nomenclature. 

This course examines the diversity in animal behavior and the means of understanding animal behavior. It examines the underlying mechanism and function of behavior, and how did a particular behavior develop and evolve. Topics include behavioral ecology; behavioral genetics; reproductive behavior; mating system; parental care; communication; foraging; learning; migration and biological rhythms; evolutionary stable strategies; sexual selection; altruism; and sociality in vertebrates and invertebrates. 

What is the state’s final frontier? How and why have governments around the world been vested with the authority to manage the most intimate aspects of our existence: from the food we eat to our sexual behavior? What has the impact of this encroachment been on our sense of self? Engaging with these questions from an historical perspective provides a critical lens for re-evaluating our own relationship to society and the state, as well as furnishing a context for considering the extent to which we are ever fundamentally “free” to possess our own bodies. Exploring the birth of “surveillance society” enables us to reflect upon – and challenge – the inherited assumptions which underpin our reliance on government and our aspirations for personal autonomy. This course ranges from the formation of the modern state in Europe and the techonologies it developed for managing populations, to global health surveillance and recent biomedical advances which have resulted in progressively interventionist governmental measures, with profound social, political and ethical implications. Topics include: surveillance; “medical police” and state-sponsored interventions in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe; the invention of the “population” as a collective body; colonialism and the global exportation of ideas about what is “normal”; “healthy citizens”: the coercive state and the democratization of society; and, finally, the limits of public health in the twenty-first century.

This course examines the design of effective marketing strategies from a general management perspective. It examines the marketing management concepts underlying both consumer and industrial marketing strategy and tactics. Strategic marketing focuses on the concepts and processes involved in developing market-driven strategies. The key challenges in formulating market-driven strategies include: (1) acquiring a shared understanding throughout the organization about the current market and how it may change in the future, (2) identifying opportunities for delivering superior value to customers, (3) positioning the organization and its offerings to best meet the needs of its target markets, and (4) developing a coordinated marketing program to deliver superior customer value.