Our Research Lab
SIEW Lab is a research team led by Professor He Shenjing, Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong. The research team focuses on equity and well-being related to housing, healthcare, and education in contemporary urbanization process.
SIEW's specific foci include
1) Formal and informal affordable housing development in developing economies;
2) Multi-dimensional housing inequalities under financialisation in pandemic-stricken megacities;
3) Uneven distribution of high-quality healthcare resources and resultant patient mobility and physician mobility;
4) Emerging forms of neighbourhood order, including for example, gated communities featuring privileged access to education service and exclusive residential environments and the systemic implications for equity in education, housing and urban resilience.
The Team
The SIEW lab brings together multi-disciplinary researchers from Europe, US, Australia, Japan, and China. Synthesising theories and methodologies from multiple disciplines, the SIEW lab draws on critical urban theories, as well as behavioural economics, political, sociological, psychological and spatial theories about welfare, health, education and housing systems and regimes.
LAB Director
Prof. Shenjing He
Head and Professor of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, HKU
Shenjing He is Professor of Urban Studies and Department Head at the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong. She is the founding director of the Social Infrastructure for Equity and Wellbeing (SIEW) Lab. Shenjing’s research interests focus on urban redevelopment/gentrification, policy mobility and entrepreneurial urbanism, rural-urban migration and informal housing, urban development and housing price mechanism, rural-urban interface and health geography. Shenjing serves as an editor for Urban Studies since 2012, and sits on the editorial board of several urban and geographical journals. At SIEW Lab, she leads multiple research projects on education-featured gated communities, multi-dimensional housing inequalities in pandemic-stricken megacities, and rural revitalization in Hong Kong.
Dr Junxi Qian
Associate Professor,
Department of Geography, HKU
Junxi Qian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong. Junxi is a social and cultural geographer who works at the intersection of geography, urban studies and cultural studies. He holds a BSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Sun Yat- sen University, China (2010), and a PhD in Human Geography from University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2013). Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Singapore Management University, Singapore, advised by Prof Lily Kong. Junxi's research interests include place politics, urban public space, modernity, religion, China's ethnic minorities/frontiers, and China's recent urban transformation. Most of his published works partake in one or several of these themes.
Dr Jin Zhu
Assistant Professor,
Faculty of Architecture, HKU
Dr Jin Zhu is an Assistant Professor at Department of Real Estate and Construction and Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong. Previously, he worked as an Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests span housing and land policy, urbanisation and migration, sustainable built environment and urban governance. He completed his PhD (Planning and Urban Development) at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia and received his bachelors and masters degrees in urban planning from Zhejiang and Tongji Universities, China. Before his PhD, Jin worked as a town planner at Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute and consulted widely for different levels of government in mainland China. During his PhD at UNSW, he also worked as a part-time researcher at the university’s City Futures Research Centre and Social Policy Research Centre.
Current Members
Dr Linwei Tian
Associate Professor,
School of Public Health, HKU
Dr Xiaohu Zhang
Assistant Professor,
Faculty of Architecture, HKU
Dr Qiong He
Postdoc Fellow
Qiong He is a Post-doctoral Fellow in HKU’s SIEW Lab since summer 2022. She obtained her PhD from Urban Geography, University of Amsterdam. Before that, she studied at Nanjing University and Renmin University of China for her Master and Bacher degrees, respectively. Her research interests focus on education and housing inequality, gentrification and suburbanization as well as residential segregation.
Miss Chenxin Wan
Ph.D. student
Chenxin is a 4rd-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the University of Hong Kong. She obtained the master's degree and bachelor's degree from Tongji University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, respectively. Her current research interests include gentrification, urban renewal, and urban conservation.
Mr Mingze Bai
Ph.D. Student
Bai, Mingze (白明泽), Ph.D. Student. Mingze's research interests include urban development, real estate markets, capital mobility, rent theory, etc. Mingze's Ph.D. project discusses the development of Asian real estate investment trusts from the perspective of real estate financialization
Dr Dan Wang
Associate Professor,
Faculty of Education, HKU
Dr Nannan Zhao
Postdoc Fellow
Nannan Zhao is a joint Post-doctoral researcher at the South China University of Technology (Department of Public Administration) and The University of Hong Kong (Department of Urban Planning and Design). She holds two Ph.D.s from the City University of Hong Kong (Department of Public Policy) and the South China University of Technology (Department of Urban and Rural Planning). She is currently working on the interplay of multi-scalar governance actors in the urban regeneration process and the effects of the latest neighborhood regeneration agenda in local planning practice. Her research interests are urban regeneration, neighborhood governance, participatory planning, and public interest representation in planning. E-mail: nnzhao@hku.hk
Miss Chenxi Li
Ph.D. student
Li, Chenxi (李晨曦), Ph.D. Student. Chenxi obtained both her bachelor's and master's degree in Human Geography at Sun Yat-san University. Her research interests lay on rental housing, urban regeneration, neighbourhood studies, etc. Chenxi's Ph.D. project examines the dynamic interactions between "state-market-society" in developing rental housing and explores the capital logic and operational mechanisms for LRAs development under financialisation.
Miss Lirong Hu
Ph.D. Student
Hu, Lirong (胡莉蓉) is a Ph.D. student. Lirong’s research interests lie in the geo-big data analysis of urban applications, housing price/rent mechanism, and geographies of education. Lirong's Ph.D. project discusses the aceess to education and its implications on housing choice and urban (re)development.
Miss Xiaoyue Deng
Ph.D. Student
Mr Ziming Wang
Ph.D. Student
Xiaoyue is s Ph.D. student at the Department of Urban Planning and Desigh, Faulty of Architecture, HKU from 2023. She obtained her bachelor's and master's degree in Human Geography from Peking University Before joining SIEW, her research focused on urban scaling law and the ubran science. Xiaoyue's research interests are urban governance, regional planning and development, education-led gentrifacion, and social urban geography.
Ziming Wang (王子銘) is a Ph.D. student who joined SIEW lab in 2023. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Tsinghua University, and a M.S. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. Prior to the current role, he carried out an independent research project on heritage resilience under the support of 2022 Onera Prize for Historic Preservation, and has interned or served short-term research/teaching assistant positions at a number of institutions. His current research interest lies in climate resilience, social equity, urban conservation and regeneration.
Miss Sijie Dong
Ph.D. Student
Miss Dining Liu
Ph.D. Student
Sijie is a Ph.D. student. She holds a bachelor's degree in Human Geography & East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and a MPhil in Planning, Growth and Regeneration from the University of Cambridge. Sijie's research interests revolve around urban redevelopment, migrants, and social equity issues, with a specific focus on education, gender, and housing inequality.
Dining Liu (刘迪宁) is a Ph.D. student with a keen interest in corporate social innovation for sustainable development. Before joining SIEW Lab in 2023, she obtained a Bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University, a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science and Technology from University of California, Berkeley. As a program manager and urban designer, she has four-year international working experience in Hong Kong, London, and San Francisco Bay Area.
Miss Yiwen Zhu
Ph.D. Student
Dr Cui Guo
Assistant Professor,
Faculty of Architecture, HKU
Dr Tianzuo Wen
Postdoc Fellow
Tianzuo Wen is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the SIEW Lab since 2023. He earned his PhD from the Department of Urban Planning and Design at HKU. Prior to that, he received his master's degree in Urban and Regional Development from Peking University and a bachelor's degree in Urban Planning from the South China University of Technology. His research interests include state-market relations, urban governance and financing, public-private partnerships, regional development, and urban climate. Currently, he is conducting research on sustainable urban development strategies.
Mr Lu Shan
Ph.D. student
Shan Lu (单路), Ph.D. Student. Before joining the University of Hong Kong and SIEW Lab, Lu obtained both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the School of Architecture, Southeast University. His research interests comprise gentrification, urban renewal, built environment, and health geography. Lu's Ph.D. project is to explore the social-spatial restructuring around the 'Healthcare City (医疗城)' in contemporary urban China.
Mr Weihang Gong
Ph.D. Student
Weihang is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture, HKU in 2022. He obtained his bachelor's degree in human geography from Zhejiang University and his Mphil degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021. His research interests include regional planning and development, gentrification, and rural governance.
Miss Zixuan Han
Ph.D. Student
Zixuan Han (韩子璇) is a Ph.D. student. Zixuan obtained her master's and bachelor's degree both from Wuhan University. Zixuan's research interests concentrate on health geography, especially about the health-related quality of life, public service and policy, and associated social inequalities. Zixuan is participating in a project focusing on cross-border healthcare and residential mobility within the Greater Bay Area.
Miss Ziyuan Li
Ph.D. Student
Li Ziyuan (李梓源) is a Ph.D. student who joined the SIEW lab in 2024. Ziyuan obtained her bachelor's degree in Landscape Studies from the University of Hong Kong, and her research focused on climate justice and grassroots migrants' climate actions. Her current research interests lie in cross-border migration, education and housing inequality, and regional governance in the Great Bay Area.
Yiwen Zhu (祝怡文) is a 4-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Urban Planning and Design at University of Hong Kong. Before joining SIEW lab in 2023, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Information Resource Management at Zhejiang University in 2023. Yiwen’s current research interests lie in healthy cities, urban big data analytics, supervised learning, social inequality and well-being.
Alumni
Prof. Chris Webster
Chair Professor and Dean,
Faculty of Architecture, HKU
Dr Mingjie Dai
Postdoc Fellow
He is Dean of HKU Faculty of Architecture and Chair Professor in Urban Planning and Development Economics in HKU’s Department of Urban Planning and Design. In 2014 he founded HKUrbanLabs as an incubation platform for novel interdisciplinary research across the Faculty of Architecture’s built environment departments and divisions and beyond. He is Senior Departmental Fellow at Cambridge University’s Department of Land Economy, and Honorary Professor at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He has published over 250 scholarly papers, book chapters and books on the idea of spontaneous urban order and received over US$25M grants for research and teaching and learning projects.
Mingjie now is a research assistant professor at the Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology. She obtained the bachelor's degree in Engineering Management from South China University of Technology in 2017 and her Ph.D. in Real Estate and Construction from the University of Hong Kong in 2021. Her research interests include housing policy, residential segregation, housing inequality, housing welfare systems, and urban and community governance.
Dr Fabian Terbeck
Postdoc Fellow
Dr Yi Ma
Postdoc Fellow
Fabian Terbeck was appointed Assistant Professor in Urban Geography at the University of South Alabama. After working on the multidimensional social inequalities related to the COVID-19 pandemic as a postdoctoral fellow at HKU’s SIEW Lab, his future research will focus on rising income and wealth inequality in metropolitan areas. He received a PhD from the University of Connecticut, and his M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Leipzig University and the University of Muenster, respectively.
Ma Yi is a postdoctoral fellow in the SIEW Lab since March 2023. He obtained his PhD Degree at the Department of Urban Planning and Design, HKU. Before that, he studied construction management and journalism at Tsinghua University. Yi is now working on climate justice and responses, especially based on the context of Global South. His research interests also include grassroots social change and governance in China.
Dr Dunxu Wu
Ph.D.
Dr Xiang Yan
Ph.D.
Dunxu obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the University of Hong Kong in 2020. He currently works in the Planning and Development Center of Key Areas in Pingshan District, Shenzhen, as a specially-appointed doctor.
Xiang received his Ph.D. from the Department of Urban Planning and Design of The University of Hong Kong in 2022. Dr. Xiang YAN is an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Environment at Sichuan University based in Chengdu. He works on the interdisciplinary research topics between urban/regional development and healthcare systems, such as healthcare city, patient/physician mobility, healthcare resource allocation, and therapeutic landscape.
Dr Rong Cai
Ph.D.
Miss Di Zeng
Research Assistant
Rong received her Ph.D. from the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the University of Hong Kong in 2020. Dr. Rong Cai is an assistant professor in the School of Government at Sun Yat-sen University. Her research interests lie at urban governance, neighbourhood governance, rural-urban fringe and housing policy. Her recent publications have been published in Urban Geography, Cities, The Geographical Journal and Sociological Studies（社會學研究）.
Di obtained her master's degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. She has worked on products related to smart education in Tencent's CSIG Cloud and Smart Industry Business Group. She currently manages products of cross-border remittance at Tencent Financial Technology and she mainly focuses on inclusive financing.
Mr Yuxuan Zhou
Research Assistant
Mr Henry Kirshmir
Research Assistant
Zhou Yuxuan is currently a research assistant at SIEW Lab. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Human geography and urban-rural planning at Sun-Yat-Sen University and master's degree at The National University of Singapore. His research interests comprise spatiotemporal statistics and public health.
Henry participates in projects which express a strong appreciation of sustainable communities. He has worked across North America, Asia and Africa on planning and real estate projects involving rural village transformation, downtown revitalization and airport city development. As a member of the SIEW Lab, Henry was involved in a 9-village rural revitalization project in Hong Kong's New Territories. He now works at MXD Development Strategists in Vancouver, Canada specialising in deal structuring and strategic implementation for a global portfolio of real estate clients.
Miss Jiaoyao Liu
Research Assistant
Dr Yongshen Liu
Postdoc Fellow
Yongshen received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong in 2021. Subsequently, he became a senior research assistant in SIEW Lab until mid 2022. Now, he works as an assistant professor in the School of Marxism, Sun Yat-sen University. His research primarily focuses on urban redevelopment.
Dr Zisheng Song
Postdoc Fellow
Zisheng is a postdoctoral fellow in the HKU’s SIEW Lab since December 2022 and working on the SPPR project on Hong Kong Residents’ Cross-border Healthcare Utilization and Cross-border Mobility in the Greater Bay Area. He completed his PhD in Real Estate and Construction Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and held his MSc from Beijing University of Chemistry Technology (BUCT), China. Prior to joining the SIEW Lab, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at KTH. His research interests mainly focus on housing economics, urban economics, residential mobility, and the built environment governance.
Dr Kun Wang
Ph.D.
Kun obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the University of Hong Kong in 2019. In 2021, Dr Kun Wang joined the Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences as an associate researcher. His research directions comprise urban political ecology, e-waste management, environmental politics and environmental justice, post-structuralist geography, etc.
Miss Xiaomeng Wang
Visiting Ph.D. Student
Xiaomeng is a PhD student at the School of Public Administration, Tsinghua University. She obtained the bachelor's degree from the Department of Geographical Sciences, Beijing Normal University. Her research interests mainly include community governance, urban geography, and the application of big data analysis in urban research.
Miss Siman Cai
Research Assistant
Siman obtained her master's degree from The University of Chicago, and a Bachelor's degree from Renmin University of China. Siman's research interests comprise urban governance, migrant & work & space, social theory, political economy.
Jiayao is a research assistant in the SIEW lab. She obtained her master's degree at Delft University of Technology and her bachelor's degree at Zhejiang University. Prior to joining the SIEW Lab, she worked as an urban planner in different urban planning and real estate development sectors in the Greater Bay Area.
Board Members (in alphabetical order)
Prof. Manuel Aalbers
Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ku Leuven
Prof. Chaolin Gu
Professor, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University
Prof. Bingqin Li
Professor, Faculty of Arts,Design & Architecture, UNSW Sydney
Dr Zhi Liu
Senior Fellow and Director of China Program, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy
Prof. Youqin Huang
Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, University at Albany
![HalPawson_LR[1].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/686166_6c7a00e73bb948c384eae4e86a3c048a~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_8,w_150,h_184/fill/w_144,h_177,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_3,enc_auto/HalPawson_LR%5B1%5D.jpg)
Prof. Hal Pawson
Professor and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
Prof. Darren Smith
Professor, school of geography and environment, Loughborough University
Prof. Shiliang Su
Professor, School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University
Prof. Fulong Wu
Professor and Bartlett Chair of Planning, Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL
Prof. Xiaogang Wu
Director, Center for Applied Social and Economic Research;
Professor of Social Science, NYU Shanghai;
Professor of Sociology, NYU
Prof. Jiawen Yang
Professor, School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University
Prof. Junyi Zhang
Professor, School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University