Alumnus Wins Postgraduate Research Award

Alison Hui (BJ 2011) has won an award for Best Oral Presentation at the 12th Annual HKU Research Postgraduate Conference. Her topic was using the media to encourage those suffering from depression to seek help.

Alison Hui (on right) receiving her award

“I felt very excited to win this award,” said Hui.  “Getting this has really helped to build up my confidence and encouraged me to put extra effort into my research.”

“Depression is an increasingly prevalent illness, but the low help-seeking rate has been a huge and worsening issue,” she said.

“As the media is powerful and influential in spreading messages, we would like to make use of this research to systematically test how the media can encourage help-seeking in depression. This includes understanding what the public has to know in order to increase their help-seeking incentives and, in turn, build more tailor-made and effective media messages.”

After graduating from the JMSC with a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 2011, Hui started work as research assistant for Dr. Fu King-wa. She then went on to do an MPhil, under Dr. Fu’s supervision.

“As a well-trained journalism graduate at the JMSC, Alison understands the secret of communication,” Dr. Fu said. “She was able to present an academic topic in a simple, illustrated way in just five minutes. She also addressed a couple of tough questions from the audience nicely. That’s why I think she deserves the award.”

“Many people know that the JMSC offers high-standard professional training for journalists, but don’t know about our postgraduate research degrees, the MPhil and PhD,” he said. “This award is a recognition of the JMSC’s capacity in training excellent postgraduate research students.”