ASIAR Internship Programme

The dynamic development and output of Asian Religious Connections Research Cluster (ASIAR) are a collaborative result between the scholars, supporting staff and also numerous student helpers/interns coming from a wide range of disciplines as well as cultural backgrounds. This page is dedicated to acknoweldge the passions, talents and energies devoted by our student helpers/interns. ASIAR grows as the community grows. If you’re also interested in joining ASIAR internship programme, check out our latest openings below.

Current Openings

Gap-year/Half-time Student Internship: Multimedia Developer (Apply by June 6th, 2022)

Asian Religious Connections Research Cluster (ASIAR) in the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS) is now recruiting Half-time Student Research Assistant to join its Gap-Year Paid Internship program from September 2022 to May 2023.

This post is targeted on undergraduate students who are going to take a gap year from their studies or wish to switch to part-time mode in order to gain work experience in media, culture and promotion.

Applicants should have broad interests in spirituality, religion, China studies/Asian studies, sociology, anthropology, media etc. and also passion in promoting and sharing knowledges, and should be capable of engaging in community-building with a wide audience.

Our ideal candidates are those who would like to develop a wide range of skills in multimedia production (e.g. video & podcast), cultural project management, editing and writing, social media promotion (Twitter, Instagram and WeChat), graphic and website design, creative and critical thinking, communication and teamwork collaborations.

It’ll be a plus if you already have some of the above experience; however, they are not filters to screen away candidates who have the following qualities:

  • A great sensibility in both textual and visual expressions;
  • A high level of self-motivation and self-learning abilities (esp. digital literacy);
  • Ability to arrange workflow and organize tasks efficiently;
  • High level of proficiency in both English and Chinese (writing and speaking);
  • Most importantly, a strong sense of responsibility, persistency and empathy;

Projects you’ll have the chance to work on:

Necessary guidance and training will be provided through hands-on practice. A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered.

Interested applicants should submit your up-to-date CV, cover letter and portfolio.

Review of applications will start from May 25, 2022 and continue until June 6, 2022, or until the post is filled, whichever is earlier.

Submit your application here: https://jobs.hku.hk/cw/en/job/515004/

For enquiries, please email to asiar@hku.hk

 

Multimedia Production and

Community-Building

I am currently in the collaborative program between HKU and UCB. I intend to major in comparative literature and minor in Germany. Currently, I am assisting the New Mindscape project, including post and social media management, text editing, and the podcast “話梅堂Mindscape”.

Mickey CHEN

Bachelor of Arts, to be graduated in 2025, HKU & UC Berkely

I am a playful nerd and hold a strong interest in Anthropology and Gender Studies. Since September 2021, I have engaged in multiple responsibilities in ASIAR, including creating Podcast 話梅堂Mindscape, assisting in community activities, visual design, and managing social media accounts. Bounded by this internship opportunity through CCH9014: Religion, Spirituality, and Social Change, I would say this is indeed a worthwhile and fruitful journey!

Ziggy ZHU

Sociology and Comparative Literature, to be graduated in 2024, HKU

My maxim is that existence precedes essence, which is a quote by Sartre. I am not that passionate about philosophy or religious study, but I find them really inspiring and spiritually uplifting. For that reason, I recently joined the New Mindscape 話梅堂 to be an audio editor. This is a great opportunity for me to apply interdisciplinary knowledge to reflect upon my daily life.

Sherry DENG

Law and Politics & Public affairs, to be graduated in 2026, HKU

I major in education and geography with interests in topics about critical thinking and sustainability. I am passionate about writing, learning new things, and exploring possibilities in life. As a summer research intern 2021, I engaged with trade data visualisation, social media content curation for the New Mindscape series and action research on Junior Youth Program in Hong Kong.

Cherry SO

BEd&BSocSc (V), be graduated in 2022, HKU

I was born in Pakistan and spent my early childhood there. At the age of 8, I moved to Hong Kong with my family. When I moved to Hong Kong, I was fascinated by the contrast between Pakistan and Hong Kong. The food, language, clothing, religion, way of living was totally different. Such exposure to different cultures at a young age aroused my interest in this field. As a result, I took History as my major and signed up for this internship. During this internship, I took up the roles of content creator, editor, and video editor. Apart from being passionate about cultures and religions, I also have a passion for the environment.

Nimra MUSHTAQ

Majoring in Geography and History, to be graduated in 2023, HKU

I was born in Singapore and grew up in Hong Kong, and growing up being exposed to different cultures and religions made me fascinated by them. At ASIAR, I mainly worked on the design aspects of The New Mindscape, including designing the social media pages, weekly newsletter as well as the website. I also observed the Junior Youth Empowerment Programme and studied the Baha’i Faith.

Stephanie CHOW

Bachelor of Social Sciences (Majoring in Sociology, Minoring in Psychology), graduating in 2023, HKU

I am a student with broad intellectual interests, particularly in history, music, and writing. I am currently studying an interdisciplinary undergraduate program and fascinated by intersections and integrations of various disciplines. I took part mostly in the social media and content curation for The New Mindscape educational series, with other duties in geographical data processing and community event planning.

Henry CHU

Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BASc), to be graduated in 2024, HKU

Gaining new knowledge on spirituality

Cherry: “Other than discovering my strengths and weaknesses, I have also gained new knowledge. Since I have never taken any courses related to spirituality before, it was inspiring to go through the materials about spirituality and the mindscape when I was curating content. I think my perspective of looking at the world and my life is renewed in some sense. I was working on the T-series about materialism and dualism. I always remind myself of not entrapping in a binary thinking framework. But then I used to despise those who are very gain-oriented and materialist, and I think that people should be more spiritual. But after engaging more with the materials, I realised this kind of mindset is also reinforcing a dualism between the material and the spiritual. Indeed, it may not be wise or possible to separate the two. I was falling into the trap of dualism that I would least want myself to be caught up in. The materials renewed my perspective and reminded me to be more open-minded. On top of that, I also have more insights about taking care of the thoughts and how my mind power can help me along the way.”

Meeting new people

Cherry: “Apart from the knowledge that I gained, I also met lovely people, such as my teammates, colleagues, study circles and people at the Junior Youth Programs, who had all given me inspirations from the interactions we had. It has widened my understanding of people from different upbringing, cultures, of different working styles and life experiences.”

Teamwork and digital skillsets

Stephanie: “Throughout this internship, I learned a lot about teamwork and collaboration through collaborating with the other interns in the tracks I was involved in, and I also learned a lot from the other interns I worked with as well. I realized that I am willing to try new things, but I also know where the boundaries of my capabilities lie. I became more organized and responsible, as well as being more open-minded. I also picked up hard skills, such as learning how to use software like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, websites like MailChimp for newsletter design, and WordPress/Divi for website design, which are software I have always been interested in trying but never had the opportunity to do so, so I am very grateful for that.”

Improving editing and communication skills

Nimra: “The best thing I learnt from this internship was the editing skills. I edited a number of writings and videos. I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, which will definitely come in handy for my future studies and career.

Apart from editing skills, I learnt how to work in a group. Over the past two years, most of my classes were held online, which hindered my communication with others. I had a few group projects, but my group mates and I only communicated online. This internship provided me the opportunity to collaborate with others. I got to communicate with people from different backgrounds, religions, interests, etc. As a result, I was able to polish my communication skills.”

Stepping out of comfort zone

Henry: “I am even more certain that I would find myself more comfortable when working privately and at my own pace. However, from the many social media tasks that required me to collaborate with other interns, I felt that I have stepped out of my comfort zone and earned myself a breakthrough. Another aspect of improvement is my communication — I could communicate my progress and my difficulties to other interns and my coordinators timely.”

Widening spiritual worldview

Henry: “I gained the most in the knowledge aspect. Dr. Palmer’s log on The New Mindscape is the most inspiring and enriching. I have gained unprecedented insight into a more spiritual worldview, anthropology, and worldly religions. From the transcriptions of the Theory Series, I learnt the academic theories and debates behind the concepts mentioned in The New Mindscape. This has sparked my interest in studying religions, rituals, and spirituality, which is complementary to my intellectual interests in history, literature, and classical music.”

English-to-Chinese Translation

I am currently a second-year student studying General Linguistics and Translation in the Faculty of Arts. I work on the English-Chinese Literature Translation for the Yaodao project. I am currently working on five long stories from Lanten Yao oral stories. I have a keen interest in mythology and ethnic cultures.

Joanna CHEN

Bachelor of Arts, to be graduated in 2024, HKU

Enthusiasm as motivation and strength
Joanna: “During my internship, I have recognized that I enjoy doing translation works. My enthusiasm is one thing that keeps me motivated. I have also read many reference materials that Joseph gave me, which familiarized me with the stories I have been working on. I discovered my strengths are my enthusiasm, my habits of reading, and fast typing. For improvement, I have become more sophisticated in English-Chinese translation by repeatedly improving and polishing my translation work.”

Journalistic Coverage

I studied Master of International and Public Affairs and Bachelor of Journalism at the University of Hong Kong. Before taking the internship at ASIAR, I worked as an intern for NK News and World Vision. I also contributed few freelance articles about international relations. I used these experiences during the internship at ASIAR, where I wrote journalistic articles for The Diplomat and Eurasia Review based on a wide variety of lectures about the religious aspects of Belt and Road Initiatives.

Vincent CHOI

Master of International and Public Affairs, graduated in 2021, HKU

I enjoy reading and writing, though I won’t say I love books, I’d say they help me think. I joined BRINFAITH in my first year of IBDP and I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet all the great minds working on this Project together. I’ve done editorial work and made creative contributions as well, wrote essays and synopses for lectures and kept in contact with contributing professors as well. Through it all I’ve been able to develop more analytical and critical thinking on complex topics in social sciences, and also sharpened my collaborative skills with others in the Project.

Wilson LAM

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, graduated in 2022, St. Stephen’s College, HK

My role in BRINFAITH is to convert the academic writings and concepts into journalistic articles. We mainly work on anthropological and sociological topics, which focus on the religious impact in the Belt and Road Initiative. These academic writings are not targeted at the general public but fellow postgraduates and scholars. Therefore, my task is to grasp the concepts that the scholar raised in the online lecture, do follow-up interviews if necessary, and finally put them together as a feature article by using journalistic skills. I have been working on Dr. Justin Haruyama’s field study project History Written in Advance: The Temporal Politics of Learning Mandarin for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Zambia. The feature article of this project is going to be published in The Conversation.

Yvonne SUN

Bachelor of Journalism, graduated in 2023, HKU

Accumulating global insights
Vincent: “During the internship, I learned the histories of exchanges and different religious communities worldwide, which I have never heard or read about before. For instance, I did not know a Chinese diaspora community in Mecca and how it facilitated the relationship between China and Saudi Arabia. By writing about these religious communities, I accumulated a wider variety of insights into the global landscape. It was an excellent experience to understand the people and culture outside my comfort zone, and I consider that the internship will become the foothold of my future career.”
Learning to report on academic research for the public

Yvonne: “One of the most important skills I have discovered throughout the internship is how to adjust my writing style based on different readerships. In journalism school, we are taught to follow a certain structure which includes a lede, context, quotes, future expectations etc. to compose a feature article. It is not an easy job to apply these journalistic skills in BRINFAITH internship because all the information is second-handed, in academic language. Therefore, I need to comprehend sociological or anthropological concepts in terms of an undergraduate mindset, but not journalists. It requires me to have more follow-up interviews with the scholars and do my research as if I am writing an academic essay. The most important thing in writing a journalistic feature article is to communicate with the general public readers. It requires me to accurately express the finding of the scholar’s research project in precise and simple language at the beginning, so I had to digest the academic content by myself, which was a transition I had never experienced before.”

Exposing to a wide range of challenging topics
Wilson: “I’m glad to have this opportunity to work for the BRINFAITH project, thanks to it I’ve been able to work on various topics (Religious Infrastructure and Circulatory Missionary) in various regions of focus (Imperial Japan, Tanzania, China, etc.). I believe the most enlightening task I’ve worked on was the lecture by Dr. Jeremy Jammes, though I don’t have the pleasure to complete the synopsis myself. The scope of his lecture was broader than the previous ones I’ve worked on, which opened my eyes to the various missionary functions aside from its religious aspect, as well as the relevance of other religious missionaries apart from Christian Evangelists. Through this internship I’ve discovered that my essay writing skills still required a lot of improvement, and that my thoughts aren’t yet as articulated to perform the tasks. This unravelled itself during my last task on Dr. Jammes’s lecture as I got a bit too ambitious on my essay structure and hoped to encompass evangelism of multiple major religions. Yet, this platform has also allowed me to spot my mistakes more easily, as I see the problems in my essay writing (sentences too long and unfocused), and it also provided knowledge on Social Sciences itself. I really do hope there are more opportunities that I may utilize to better further my learning and better equip myself in knowledge and in skillset. Yet again, I am entirely grateful for the opportunity given to a high-school student, thank you.”

Database Mechanism Consultation

I’m a Master student at the Faculty of Education, enrolled in September 2020. I received my bachelor’s degree inJournalism from the Ocean University of China. I’m currently interested in information management and communication studies. During the internship, I’ve helped organise and review the research materials about the Huanghua and YAODAO projects, coordinate the communication with HKU Library and also design mechanism for data uploading and sharing procedures in HKU Datahub that is convenient for the data management of ASIAR cluster.

MENG Yao

Master of Science in Library and Information Management, graduated in 2021, HKU

Gaining confidence by solving problems
MENG Yao: “At the beginning, I was very unsure of my ability. But to my surprise, Dr. Pamler was willing to give me a chance to try the work I thought I couldn’t do before and gave me a lot of freedom. I was very surprised and amazed by this, but at the same time, it put a lot of mental pressure on me. Later on, while doing the requirement documents and work planning, I tried many softwares by myself, checked a lot of information, and asked many friends who are more experienced than me. In the process, I learned a lot about the practical application of data management, which will benefit me a lot in my future study and work. I am very happy that we were able to drop some old plans and find a more suitable platform and a public way through continuous communication and practices. Finally, we work with HKUL and we have our own homepages with fixed rules in the HKU datahub. Although this is much simpler to operate
than the local database we envisioned at the beginning, it is also because of the iterations and modifications during the process that we
were able to have this final and better result. The ultimate goal of information management is to turn complexity into simplicity. I started to feel a sense of accomplishment from finding and solving problems.”
Finding the peaceful pace to enjoy the work and life
MENG Yao: “I have always been a very anxious person, which directly led me to apply for our job without even thinking about whether I could afford one more part-time internship. I often want more experience and forget to think seriously about what I actually enjoy. I am very grateful to Dr.Palmer, Lunar, Edward, Martin, Joseph, not only for your help and advice when I was anxious, which helped me balance my tasks and find my way, but also for your work ethic. As I joked with my family: I seem to join a very “graceful” team. I used to be very eager to get things done and had no sense of direction, and I valued the outcome far more than the process. So my mindset was relatively negative, and I could easily become very anxious. Getting along with everyone has made me realize that in most cases it is useless to rush. If I am working on something I really love, then I shouldn’t be miserable about the difficulties in the process and complain all the time. I should learn to enjoy the process of finding my favourite direction and working on it, and focus on the task itself without caring whether it is achieved “fast”or “slow”. You are really excellent people and I am honoured to have known you during the confusing period of near graduation.”

Artistic Illustrations for Storybooks

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Current Openings

Gap-year/Half-time Student Internship: Multimedia Developer (Apply by June 6th, 2022)

Asian Religious Connections Research Cluster (ASIAR) in the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS) is now recruiting Half-time Student Research Assistant to join its Gap-Year Paid Internship program from September 2022 to May 2023.

This post is targeted on undergraduate students who are going to take a gap year from their studies or wish to switch to part-time mode in order to gain work experience in media, culture and promotion.

Applicants should have broad interests in spirituality, religion, China studies/Asian studies, sociology, anthropology, media etc. and also passion in promoting and sharing knowledges, and should be capable of engaging in community-building with a wide audience.

Our ideal candidates are those who would like to develop a wide range of skills in multimedia production (e.g. video & podcast), cultural project management, editing and writing, social media promotion (Twitter, Instagram and WeChat), graphic and website design, creative and critical thinking, communication and teamwork collaborations.

It’ll be a plus if you already have some of the above experience; however, they are not filters to screen away candidates who have the following qualities:

  • A great sensibility in both textual and visual expressions;
  • A high level of self-motivation and self-learning abilities (esp. digital literacy);
  • Ability to arrange workflow and organize tasks efficiently;
  • High level of proficiency in both English and Chinese (writing and speaking);
  • Most importantly, a strong sense of responsibility, persistency and empathy;

Projects you’ll have the chance to work on:

Necessary guidance and training will be provided through hands-on practice. A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered.

Interested applicants should submit your up-to-date CV, cover letter and portfolio.

Review of applications will start from May 25, 2022 and continue until June 6, 2022, or until the post is filled, whichever is earlier.

Submit your application here: https://jobs.hku.hk/cw/en/job/515004/

For enquiries, please email to asiar@hku.hk