Dr. Petula, Sik Ying HO is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research and teaching interests are in the area of homosexuality, gender and sexuality issues. She has made important contributions to the development of a dynamic theory of gender and sexuality in the international arena that will help problematize feminist theories and resist Western hegemonies through empirical case studies that make connections between discourses, cultural practices, political economy, and social change.
She is working, with Professor Stevi Jackson on a book provisionally entitled Women Doing Intimacy: Gender, Family and Modernity in Hong Kong and Britain for Palgrave Macmillan’s ‘Studies in Family and Intimate Life’ series.
Dr. Ho’s current projects also include using documentary films to explore the integration of arts and scholarship. She has produced 48 documentary films based on various research projects. They include: 22 Springs: The Invincible; Whatever Will Be Will Be; Hong Kong Calling Tokyo and The “Kong-lo” Chronicles.They represent new ways of collecting data, producing new knowledge and disseminating findings.
Dr. Ho’s 2013 multi-media theatre performance “Love Sex and Hope: Ho Style” explores the use of theatre as a medium for sex education. She considers it to be the most innovative research output as it is one of the first theatrical performance that has uniquely combined sex, the arts and academic research.
Her new book, co-edited with Ka Tat Tsang is entitled Love and Desire in Hong Kong. It is published in English and Chinese by Hong Kong University Press and China Social Science Press in 2012.
A Woman in A Flat
(2013 / 5:16 / colour / sound)
This is a story about how a woman with a flat (or situated in the note “A flat”) can use herself, her body and performative actions to create a social movement. I believe that every time I tell my story, I become a better person with all the re-writings that bring a deeper level of awareness. I also hope that it would encourage others to tell their stories, make sense of their lives through the process, and help inspire others. If we can liberate from a narrow self through the telling of a story, writing of a book, a film or any self-project that can help us look at the bigger sky and re-unite with a bigger world, it is a therapy that can help us transform our limitations to something limitless and eternal. The gender, sexual, and body politics of such ‘one woman, one movement’ is perhaps part and parcel of the feminist or queer project.