Documentary film screening, followed by Q&A
Friday, 29 May 2026, 12pm to 1.30pm
This documentary adopts a traditional historical approach, drawing on published sources and archival manuscripts from both Hong Kong and London. It explores five key themes: 1) water, infrastructure, and the environment; 2) water and society; 3) water, culture, and foodways; 4) water usage and management and 5) water and industries. By weaving these strands together, the documentary offers a timely and original contribution to the environmental, political, social, and economic history of Hong Kong. It also resonates with global conversations on climate change, highlighting how past strategies were developed to cope with water crises in a rapidly urbanising city with limited welfare provisions and a narrow tax base-conditions still mirrored in many regions today. Through historicising natural disasters and water emergencies, the documentary deepens academic discourse on environmental change and urbanisation, while offering valuable lessons for contemporary challenges.
Dr Florence MOK is a Nanyang Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University. She is a historian of colonial Hong Kong, modern China and British colonialism, with an interest in environmental history, the Cold War and state-society relations. She is the author of Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97, published by Manchester University Press (Studies in Imperialism series) in 2023 and the co-editor of A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945-1997, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2025.
Dr Siu-hei LAI is Lecturer at Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He is an anthropologist focusing on youth, aspiration and Chinese migration in Mainland Southeast Asia. He obtained his PhD in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His doctoral thesis examines how the young Yunnanese Chinese in the Thai-Burmese borderland pursue their aspirations by migrating within and beyond the borderland.
Mr Sahil BHAGAT is a Research Associate in the History Department at Nanyang Technological University. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of St Andrews and a joint master’s degree from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (LSE). His work pertains to the transnational labour and environmental histories of plantation-based communities in British Malaya and Singapore.
Speaker(s): Dr Florence MOK (Nanyang Technological University), Dr Siu-hei LAI (Chiang Mai University), Mr Sahil BHAGAT (Nanyang Technological University)
Venue:
Dickson Poon Building, Oxford China Centre - Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor)
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Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor) Dickson Poon Building Canterbury Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX2 6LU United Kingdom
Department: Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Department)
Host: Dr Verna Yu