Postgraduate Student Life @ CUHK

For Ananya Roy, climate change is something she watches unfold from her window every day. As a PhD candidate in English Literary Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and recipient of the prestigious Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS), Ananya has built a research life at the unlikely intersection of post-colonial literature, food studies, and coastal ecology. Her work examines transnational Pacific ecologies, toxicity, and climate crisis narratives through a literary lens - and there are few better places in the world to do it than Hong Kong.

From Leeds to Hong Kong

After completing her second master's degree at the University of Leeds, Ananya could have followed the well-worn path toward another Western institution. Instead, she looked east. “I did my second master's in Leeds, and while I was there, I was looking for opportunities closer to home because I used to feel homesick in the UK,” she explains.

The pull wasn't purely personal, however. Professor John McLeod, a faculty member at Leeds who had previously served as a visiting assistant professor at CUHK, pointed her toward specific mentors in Hong Kong whose research interests aligned closely with her own.

She quickly recognised that the Department of English at CUHK was a natural home for her work in environmental humanities - a conviction reinforced by the university's strong QS ranking, the depth of the department, and the prospect of working under her supervisor, Professor David Huddart, whose guidance alongside her committee has since made the transition to academic and daily life at CUHK feel as intellectually stimulating as it has welcoming.

Hong Kong's geography sealed the decision. For a researcher focused on transpacific literature and coastal ecologies, the city sits at a strategic and environmental crossroads - connecting the very regions her work explores. It was, in every sense, the right place to be.

A Fellowship That Levels the Playing Field

Funding is often the quiet anxiety behind every PhD decision, but for Ananya, the HKPFS transformed that concern into confidence. Unlike fellowship structures in the UK or US that frequently favour the sciences, she found that Hong Kong's Research Grants Council (RGC) takes a strikingly different approach.

“The HKPFS does not place humanities, social sciences, and science students in a hierarchy; it treats all applicants at the same level,” she notes. “That is something I was awestruck by because it rarely happens in the UK or the US. It empowers me as an English literature student to know we are treated similarly to scholars in other departments.”

Combined with the Vice Chancellor's Scholarship, the package covers tuition in full, provides a comprehensive monthly stipend, and includes guaranteed on-campus accommodation - making the transition to Hong Kong postgraduate studies remarkably smooth.

For a scholar from a developing country, the support goes even further, extending to conference travel allowances, registration fees, and open-access journal publication processing fees.

CUHK graduate programmes also push students well beyond the boundaries of their home departments. Ananya has taken courses in Cultural Studies and engaged with diverse language departments in CUHK’s Faculty of Arts, weaving digital humanities, fieldwork, and anthropology into her literary framework.

Through the University's competitive digital humanities scheme, students can win fully funded placements at the University of Oxford for specialised modules. The Impact Mobility Scheme allows post-candidacy PhD students to spend three to six months conducting archival or field research at institutions like UCLA or the University of Edinburgh - all while continuing to receive their regular stipends.

Living Inside Her Research

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Ananya's time in Hong Kong is how thoroughly the city has entered her work. Her research focuses on coastal and littoral ecologies, and in Hong Kong, those themes are impossible to escape.

“My stay in Hong Kong has given me first-hand experience of what climate change actually feels like,” she says. “Experiencing the typhoon seasons, with multiple severe typhoons hitting the coast, made me realise that climate change is not just a textual occurrence; it is literally happening in reality.”

That immediacy has shaped her leadership of Green Worlds, an Environmental Humanities Reading Group she founded and coordinates.  The group has plans to visit Tai O - a historic fishing village and wetland on Hong Kong's coastline that is acutely vulnerable to rising seas - as part of upcoming hiking trips and summer reading group activities, giving members direct exposure to the ecological fragility she writes about.  Even her daily surroundings reinforce the connection; her room in the Postgraduate Hall looks out over the sea, keeping the Blue Humanities literally in view.

Advice for Prospective Scholars

For international students in Hong Kong considering a research degree, Ananya points to teaching assistantships as an underappreciated asset. Though the compulsory duties may initially feel like a burden, she stresses that a strong teaching record is essential for anyone targeting post-doctoral positions or assistant professorships on the global academic market.

More broadly, she describes The Chinese University of Hong Kong postgraduate community as genuinely diverse, nurturing, and free of the cultural insularity that can define other institutions. A responsive administrative staff, an inter-university library loan system spanning Hong Kong, and a campus calendar rich with international cultural events have all helped her feel completely at home.

“I am incredibly grateful that I chose CUHK, and that Hong Kong chose me in return,” she reflects. “Your life on this green campus is never going to be mundane or bleak - you just need to get out of your dorm.”