Organisation profile

The Department of Government and International Studies (GIS) lies at the core of the University’s ambition of being a leading Liberal Arts university in Asia. We are heavily involved in global, comparative and local research, and closely connected to our local community, through our research, our engagement and our teaching and learning programmes. Our niche is the long-standing focus on global affairs in an increasingly interconnected world. Hong Kong and non-local students attending the Programme are given invaluable opportunities to reflect critically on how best to position Hong Kong and, by extension China, along the global-domestic nexus on the economic, social and geopolitical fronts. Since its inception, we have committed to the development of an open and diverse intellectual environment for the faculty and students to freely engage the theoretical perspectives and methodological tools to make sense of politics and international relations on both normative and empirical grounds. What guides this endeavour has been a concentric vision of global citizenship, including but not restricted by one’s self-identity or temporal preferences for ideas and interest, which emphasizes common challenges and collective problem-solving, both globally and locally. We take lesson-learning through advanced comparative studies seriously. Our Programme's commitment to nurture our young people to become cross-cultural interlocutors with world-class political science and international relations training provides us with a competitive edge.

We host two undergraduate degree programmes: BSocSc (hons) in Government and International Studies and the BSocSc (hons) in European Studies, the latter offered via French and German Streams. We are also involved in Faculty-wide Masters and doctoral programmes. In terms of our teaching provision and pedagogical approach, GIS is a very internationalized department that strongly encourages its students to spend one semester off-campus, preferably in another university overseas, and to learn more about the world outside of Hong Kong. The GIS programme is unique in Hong Kong because of its joint focus on Asia and European political affairs. It offers the basic introduction courses to political science, comparative politics, political culture, political economy and international relations. In addition, it offers many major required or elective courses related to China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia as well as to European Union institutions and political developments, particularly French and German politics. The European Studies programme fulfills HKBU’s vision “[t]o be a leading liberal arts University in Asia delivering […] global culture”. We are the only European Studies programme in Hong Kong and in the Asia-Pacific that has a compulsory full academic year (2 consecutive semesters) in Europe, in France or in Germany. We have pioneered two dual degree programmes which ensure that a regular stream of non-local, non-mainland students will study for our programmes. We recognise the value-added dimension of global awareness while ensuring that the student body remains strongly anchored in Hong Kong. Hence, we endeavor to recruit a cohort of talented cosmopolitan students, who are liable to return to Hong Kong at the end of their studies and assume leading positions of responsibility as part of the interface between Hong Kong and the world, notably Europe. We are concerned with promoting the needs of Hong Kong and international society. Recent graduate employment surveys demonstrate the resolutely international vocation of our graduates, who occupy positions in business, the voluntary sector, public administration and higher education across the world.