Wing Lam Michelle Chan

Research Topic

Print Work and Print Culture in Industrial Hong Kong, c. 1950s-1970s

Supervisor: Jennifer Altehenger

I am interested in consumer culture, print media, industrialisation and work in Hong Kong. My DPhil project focuses on the post-war decades from the 1950s to the 1970s, using consumer culture to probe social-cultural change amidst domestic industrial transitions and the internationalised Cold War. By centring the work of producing consumer culture — the white collar work of editors and journalists, the technical work of printing, formal and informal light industrial labour, and the creative profession of design — I examine how industrial capitalism and consumerism were made material in and through Hong Kong. To these ends, I use oral histories, industry files, business archives, newspapers and design ephemera. 

My DPhil study is funded by the Clarendon Scholarship and the Magdalen College Graduate Scholarship in History, and my work is supervised by Dr Jennifer Altehenger. Also at Oxford, I developed my interest in print culture beyond its textual dimension during my MSt in Global and Imperial History and my BA in History and Economics. My masters work probed tensions between Hong Kong Chinese businessmen and cultural production during the Interwar, and my undergraduate research investigated diglossia and political journalism in 1905 Hong Kong amidst a transnational boycott movement. My research thus adopts an integrated lens on production and consumption, highlighting everyday voices within Hong Kong's local and transborder contexts.