On December 9 2022, the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) invited Dr. Qiaoyun Zhang from Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) to have a lecture on her research of Teaching Empathy and Reflexivity in General Education Courses. Around 10 participants joined at scene, and a live stream of the lecture attracted around 140 online viewers to join.

The head of Department of Social Sciences, Prof. Xiang Wang gave a welcome speech to the audiences and introduced Dr. Zhang.

Dr. Qiaoyun Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the General Education Office (2019-2022) and Department of Social Sciences (2022- ) at UIC. A cultural anthropologist, Dr. Zhang’s research interests include post-disaster recovery, risk and culture, ethnic relations, and intangible cultural heritage safeguarding in China. She has produced more than 10 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Her research has been funded by major research grants in China and the United States. Dr. Zhang recently published a paper about her teaching philosophy in the journal Innovative Teaching and Learning and has given several lectures on the related topic.

The lecture explored how empathy and reflexivity, the keystones of contemporary pedagogical philosophy, can be taught, learned, and applied through general education (GE) courses with an anthropological approach. Anthropological theories and methodologies provoke researchers to understand cultural differences from a holistic, comparative, and relativist viewpoint. Dr. Zhang shared her findings of the focus group interviews with students of the GE courses at BNU-HKBU United International College, and stated that an effective and affective way of teaching empathy and reflexivity in general education courses is to raise a sensitive understanding of peoples and cultures at the margin of society and to encourage critical analyses of the historicity and complexity of social issues.

After the lecture, discussions aroused both offline and online.