Interdisciplinary Research Platform (IRP) 2015-2017

The Interdisciplinary Research Platform (IRP) is a three-year project commenced in January 2015. The project builds and operates a platform to promote and conduct interdisciplinary research activities. All Shue Yan members including teachers, students and alumni are encouraged to participate in the platform and earn from ample scholarly insights and interesting ideas in research, particularly in the booming interdisciplinary fields of neuroscience, decision science and strategic behavioral science.

Project Objectives

The project aims to construct an interdisciplinary platform, utilizing current and newly acquired resources, and further academic research at the institution. It is planned to offer academics within and outside the institution opportunities for gaining knowledge from respected academics and accomplished researchers, in order to enhance the research capabilities and research output of academics from various disciplines within HKSYU, and to develop research expertise in the areas of decision-making, negotiation and persuasion and brain-based teaching and learning. The IDS longs for creating a niche for HKSYU in the above strategic areas through interdisciplinary research collaboration together with the improvement in teaching and learning across the university.

Project Offering

Three common areas of interest are identified. They are the Brain-Based Teaching and Learning, Decision-Making, and Negotiation and Persuasion.

1. Brain-based teaching and learning is an interdisciplinary research topic aimed at promoting quality education for students, involving academics from diverse backgrounds, including neuroscientists, language specialists, cognitive psychologists, educational psychologists, sociologists, and frontline educators from all disciplines providing direct teaching to students.

2. Decision-making is an interdisciplinary research topic, of interest to academics from diverse backgrounds. For instance, while psychologists are interested in the rationality and irrationality of decision-making, and hope to gain some insight into the analytical ability of the human mind, business scientists are interested in the importance of factors such as rewards and risks in human judgement. This becomes a fascinating research topic in all disciplines.

3. Negotiation and persuasion skills are now having wide applications in psychotherapy, conflict resolution, arbitration, mediation, endorsement in advertising and business and marketing. Interdisciplinary research collaboration between business, neuroscience, psychotherapy and law which involve the skills of negotiation and persuasion would therefore prove worthwhile and productive.

The project will offer a series of public lectures and workshops delivered by experts in the three aforementioned areas. Each theme is comprehensively addressed through two or three public lectures and three or four workshops conducted by accomplished researchers and respected academics over a one-year period. Furthermore, small-group tutorials by senior academics from local institutions of higher education will be provided to consolidate learning and explore relevant research after the lectures and workshops.

It is believed that the interdisciplinary collaboration in research can be methodically facilitated through this project. The research capabilities at HKSYU can also be enhanced and the platform created can shape a research niche for the institution in the areas of decision-making, negotiation and persuasion and brain-based teaching and learning.

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