Dr. Liza Wing Man Kam
Curriculum Vitae
Liza Wing Man Kam is a guest of the Department of Religious Diversity. She is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Chinese Societies at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen. Kam pursued architectural training in design schools and practices in London, Paris, Liverpool, Hong Kong and Singapore before she joined the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany in 2009 and obtained her doctorate (summa cum laude) in December 2013. Her doctoral research focused on depicting the transformation of the political, societal and cultural symbolisms represented by the Hong Kong colonial urban heritage in the city’s unique post-colonial settings, by illustrating the inter-relation between architecture, historiography, identity formation and hence civic awareness.
Her current research investigates the colonial Shinto Shrines in Post-war Taiwan as both ‘religious’ space and political symbolisms for enunciating different powers. Departing from analyzing these shrines as colonial architectural icons the project studies their evolved/ evolving roles as various political symbolisms in post-colonial Taiwan, the liturgical and non-religious activities hosted in them, and their role being the tools and driving forces to gather/mobilize populaces. How do the performative effects of the conducted rituals affect the process of identity formations in parallel with the historical timeline marking the several political paradigm shifts in the Taiwanese society since the colonial era? How could other post-colonial settings in the Chinese context, such as Hong Kong, be compared?
Undertaking interdisciplinary approach (architectural history and theory, historiography, anthropology, urban sociology, political science and more), Kam is intrigued by the employment of narratives represented by both urban fabrics and space users in urban research, and how these narratives work in parallel/ contrast to history. As much as knowledge, she is also interested in sports, food, cinema and more.