Professor Wu Ka Ming

Sustainability and Social Innovation

📅 9 November 2025 (Sunday)

🕛 1630 - 1730

ProfessorWu Ka Ming is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies and Director of Centre for Social Innovation Studies (CSIS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a cultural anthropologist of contemporary China, and her work is interdisciplinary in approach at the intersection of Cultural Studies, Anthropology and China Studies. Her research and scholarship have developed in concomitance with the field of environmental humanities, with waste studies and critical urban studies as the major pillars. Her book Feiping Shenghuo: Lajichang De Jingji, Shequn Yu Kongjian (CUHK 2016) (Living with Waste: Economies, Communities and Spaces of Waste Collectors in China) discusses the socio-cultural impacts of waste and lives of waste pickers in Beijing. Professor Wu is the Editor-in-chief of the journal Worldwide Waste. At CSIS, Professor Wu has initiated a series of participatory action research projects on plastic reduction, and lately, art and humanities responses to sea level rises. 

Organisation Description

The Centre for Social Innovation Studies (CSIS) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong aims at promoting research, knowledge transfer and exchange between practitioners and academics in the field of social innovation. CSIS’s projects include art and humanities approach to sustainability education and waste reduction, precarious labour and community building through Social Innovation in Hong Kong. In 2024, CSIS focused on plastic reduction and migrant domestic helpers recycling practices. It has also fostered a collaboration with the Maxim’s Catering on plastic reduction design. In 2025, its focus will be on collecting community stories of and resilience building to extreme weather and sea level rises in Hong Kong.