AGBLEVOR, Emelia Afi (Ph.D Student)

Emelia Afi Agblevor is a PhD Sociology student, from Ghana, specializing in Medical Sociology. She earned her MPhil degree in Sociology as well as her B.A degree (Sociology and Classical History) from the University of Ghana. Her MPhil thesis was on “Self-medication Practices among Families in Accra”. Building on this research, her PhD work focuses on “Self-medication with Body-enhancing Medicines”, under the supervision of Professor Gina Lai. Emelia has a keen interest in the evolution of self-medication practices in Ghana especially within the context of the increasing accessibility to the internet and social media applications in Africa as well as the interrelations of the phenomenon to gender and social capital. During her MPhil studies, Emelia was attached to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana where she gained hands-on experience with various data collection and analyses tools. She also has done some mainstream journalism work and as a result is very passionate about improving how academics communicate their research to the broader society for a stronger impact.

Wong, Hon Tung 黃漢彤 (M.Phil. Student)

I am currently a full-time MPhil sociology student in HKBU. I received my BA degree of sociology from CUHK. My current research topic is the social aspects of fintech (financial technology). I am interested in broader fields including sociology of development, economic sociology and political economy.

ODOI, Elizabeth (Ph.D Student)

Elizabeth holds a master of philosophy degree in Sociology from the University of Ghana. Her master thesis investigated ideal mate selection in Accra. Her current research interest lies in  the performance of pregnancy and motherhood by women in Ghana, She is specifically interested in how women navigate and negotiate both global and local discourses surrounding pregnancy and motherhood.

SCHÖPF, Caroline 詩霖 (Ph.D Student)

Caroline M. Schöpf is a doctoral fellow of the Joint Research Group ‘Migration, China, and the Global Context’ of the Max Weber Foundation and a Phd. candidate of the Sociology Department in Hong Kong Baptist University. Bringing migration studies, critical race theory and world system approaches into a dialogue, her dissertation project compares the labor market incorporation and social integration of highly skilled White and South Asian migrants in Hong Kong. Caroline was born in socialist East Germany and moved to West Germany as a child. She holds a M.A. in Japanese and Chinese studies, has lived and worked in Asia (Hong Kong, Japan and China) for 8 years, and speaks fluent Chinese and Japanese. Her own rich migration experience sparked her interest in migration and inequality. Her work has been presented at twelve international conferences and workshops, including the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, the Canadian Sociological Association Annual Conference, and a International Sociological Association RC54 Conference. She co-authored an article published in Research on Social Work Practice.

ZHANG, Linlin 張琳琳 (Ph.D Student)

Zhang Linlin is a Phd candidate in HKBU . She has been managing her e-commerce company for many years in mainland China before starting her PhD study . Her current research interest focuses on the role of guanxi in entrepreneurship processes in e-commerce industries of mainland China.

OLA, Bamidele (Ph.D Student)

Bamidele Emmanuel Ola is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, specializing in Gender studies and human development across the developing regions of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America (AfAELA). He is particularly interested in understanding how a series of issues in the socio-political, economic and cultural spheres interrelate with and influence shifting prevalence and instances of gender-based violence against women and men in these regions. He is also interested in understanding how these macro and micro factors play in the production, reproduction and sustenance of women as the underclass in their respective localities. Bamidele uses large body of quantitative and qualitative (mixed method) data in designing his cross-cultural and transnational comparative analyses of these global phenomena. He has authored a growing number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and featured on many international conference platforms. Bamidele was recently awarded the Best Position Paper Award for his position paper and presentation on Gender Equality in India at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University). Bamidele has a distinction (magna cum laude) in his Master program in Population and Development at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation, in June 2018, and a Master of Science in Sociology from the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 2012. Bamidele's goal focusses on the socio-economic empowerment and development of women and girls potentials in the developing world as he sees these as mostly a "doubly disadvantaged and disenfranchised category" of humans, spread across the least and less developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Bamidele is currently on a 4-year PhD Sociology program at the prestigious HKBU, Hong Kong.