Postgraduate Student Life @ CUHK

Waranya  Buranakarn (Va) arrived at her PhD in Communication at CUHK with a clear sense of what she was looking for and where she needed to be to find it. Having completed her undergraduate studies in Bangkok and a master's degree in Shanghai, Va had built an academic life rooted in Asia. The question was “what comes next?”. That’s where Hong Kong provided the answer.

“Hong Kong is in the middle of everything,” she explains. “First, it is a city where the culture sits between East and West. Hong Kong’s location itself also sits in the middle of East and Southeast Asia. This helps me keep connected with people in Shanghai and  in Bangkok at the same time. It’s easier to do collaboration or research.”

Research at the Intersection of Politics,  Emotions and Data

Va's work sits at a demanding crossroads: political communication, particularly social movements, morality and emotion, and computational textual analysis. Because of her choosing to study in East Asia and Southeast Asia where political communication can be a controversial topic, finding faculty who actively work within this field is especially hard. CUHK’s strong reputation in political communication research was the decisive factor in her choice of programme.

“In CUHK, we have professors that are actually doing social movement research in communication,” Va notes. “I came across many papers from CUHK professors during my research period, and I prefer the style of writing and the work from our professors and researchers, so I joined for my training.”

These intellectual alignments are grounded in real-world experience. Before arriving at CUHK, Va worked as a journalist, producing scoops for various online media outlets, including Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism (TCIJ) and, as a co-founder and lead content editor at Feministnhoi, a Thai feminist media collective, and as a member of the research team for the Tamsang-Tamsong project at Chulalongkorn University. For a PhD student in Communication in Hong Kong whose work concerns how societies process and contest political information, that background is foundational.

A Community That Reaches Outward

One of the defining features of Va's experience at CUHK has been the School of Journalism and Communication's culture of international engagement. “Many of my peers aim to attend international conferences,” she says. “We have more information on those opportunities. When you have a community that is consistently aiming for international engagement and publication, you get the knowledge of how it works and gain more confidence.”

That confidence has already translated into tangible achievements. Va has presented at the National Communication Association (NCA) conference in New Orleans, and has a paper accepted at the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Cape Town in June 2026.

For students considering postgraduate study in Hong Kong and weighing up which environment will best support their international ambitions, Va's trajectory offers a clear illustration of what a department oriented toward global engagement can produce.

Choosing a Supervisor: Advice for PhD Students

When Va advises prospective doctoral students, she is direct about where priorities should lie. “When you do a PhD, I think it is better that you need to see which professors have the same research interests as you,” she advises. “It depends on what you want as well, some people prefer someone who has done methodology they were interested in. Some go for personality because they need other support systems. but I go for advisor that matches with my research interests because they will get your topic, what you want to do, and why you want to do it.”

It is advice that reflects a broader philosophy about what a PhD actually demands - years of sustained focus on a narrow question. For students researching PhD programmes in Communication in Asia, choosing an advisor is a serious task, you need to find one who has the right match both personality and research interest.

A Mountain Campus, A Moment of Calm

Va's work requires sustained engagement with some of the most turbulent dynamics in contemporary societies - conflict, protest, political contestation. That makes the quieter dimensions of life at CUHK more valuable. Her most memorable experience at the University is only a small, repeated ritual. 

“Our office is in the Humanities Building, which is at the top of the mountain at CUHK,” she shares. “Every time I went there, I  can see the Guan Yin statue. It’s like a routine when you hike to the New Asia College, you see it and you pray. It also reminds me of my grandpa and his siblings because they believe in Guan Yin. Seeing the statue makes me feel relaxed and at peace everytime.”

For an international student in Hong Kong studying forces that pull societies apart, finding stillness in a mountainside campus overlooking a harbour is, perhaps, its own kind of research insight.

Building Bridges for Thai Scholars

Looking ahead, Va's ambitions extend beyond her own career. She wants to strengthen the connection between Thai researchers and the global academic community - facilitating collaboration between local Thai scholars, Thai academics based abroad, and international institutions.

“I want to connect with more Thai scholars, either local or abroad, to collaborate with each other,” she says. “Communication is interdisciplinary, so I think it would be helpful to connect with more Thai scholars, especially for computational social science.”
 

As a recipient of both the Postgraduate Studentship and the School of Journalism and Communication Internationalization Scholarship, Va has the institutional support to turn those ambitions into reality. For a researcher who has spent her career building bridges - between journalism and academia, between Bangkok, Shanghai and Hong Kong, between local political realities and global scholarly frameworks - the next chapter looks well within reach.