Director, IRCAHC
Professor
Department of English and Communication
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Research interests:
- stigma, chronic illness, pyscho-oncology, digust, culture, attitudes and communication about the natural
Associate Director, IRCAHC
Associate Professor and Associate Head (Undergraduate Education)
School of Nursing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Professor
Department of English and Communication
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Professor Cummings studies public health reasoning at both individual and organizational levels. She is a health professional (speech and language therapist) as well as an academic linguist.
Professor Cummings conducts research in three main areas: Linguistics (pragmatics and clinical linguistics); Communication disorders (particularly pragmatic disorders); and Public health communication. The current focus of her research in pragmatic disorders is on the role that pragmatic features of language can play in the diagnosis of conditions such as dementia. She is also interested in language and communication problems in adults with Long COVID. Her research in public health examines the reasoning strategies that experts and lay people use to assess health risks and inform decision-making. The emphasis of this work is on a group of arguments that are typically characterized as fallacies, but which can be shown to function as facilitative cognitive heuristics during reasoning.
Topics for potential PhD students:
- Public health communication
- Health reasoning
- Speech-language pathology
- Communication disorders
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Communication
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Research interests:
- Foucault, critical discourse analysis, identity, health, communication, post-structural research methodologies and methods
Research Assistant Professor
Department of English and Communication
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Research interests
- discourse analysis, workplace communication (e.g. healthcare communication), conversation analysis, pragmatics.
Associate Professor
Department of Applied Social Sciences
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong
Dr Judy Siu is an anthropologist who researches in health care and is interested in qualitative research approaches to various health topics. She has expertise in different health issues in Hong Kong, including but not limited to, the use of complementary and alternative medicine by chronically ill patients, the illness experience of chronically ill patients and their caregivers, illness-associated stigmas, doctor-patient communication in relation to social structure and gender hierarchy to name a few.
