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Professor Junxi Qian 錢俊希 副教授

Associate Professor

Room 10.08

391 77461

jxqian@hku.hk

QIAN JX.png

Junxi is a social and cultural geographer who works at the intersection of geography, urban studies, and cultural studies. He holds a BSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Sun Yat- sen University, China (2010), and a PhD in Human Geography from University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2013). Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong in 2017, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Singapore Management University, Singapore. Junxi's research interests include cultural geographies, urban studies and theories, urban-rural systems, cultural economic geographies, and sustainability transition in a social and cultural perspective. At HKU, he serves as the Programme Director of Master of Arts in China Development Studies, Deputy Director for the Social Infrastructure of Wellbeing and Equality Lab (SIEW), and Cluster Leader for the Urban-Rural Systems Research Cluster, Urban Systems Institute. He holds editorial or editorial board positions at major international journals such as Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (2015-), Social & Cultural Geography (2020-), Dialogues in Human Geography (2020-), Transactions in Planning and Urban Research (2022-), Urban Geography (2022-), Area Development and Policy (2023-), and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2024-). 

Research Interests

  • Cultural geographies

  • Cultural economic geographies

  • Urban and regional geographies

  • Urban-rural interactions

  • Sustainability transition

Courses

Profile

GEOG2109

Population Geography and Social Development

6

credits

Annual; 1st Semester

Profile

GEOG2136

Political Geography: International Relations and the World Economy

6

credits

Annual; 2nd Semester

Profile

GEOG4006

Research Frontiers in Human Geography ^

12

credits

Annual; Full-year

Selected Publications

  Online First / Forthcoming  

  • Ning A, Qian JX (corresponding author). The “darkest history” must live: Narrating Sino-Japanese relations through museum geopolitics. Tourism Geographies (online first).
     

  • Zhang H, Qian JX (corresponding author). Branding the ‘VBA’ (Village Basketball Association) to revitalize a Miao village in China: Platform ruralism in the making. Area (online first).
     

  • Qian JX, Ma Y, Tang XQ. In the frontier zone of market transition: Economic possibilities across the market/non-market divide. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space (online first).
     

  • Qian JX, Yang XH, Tang XQ. Thinking through the everywhereness of borders: Mobile borders, everyday practices, and state logics in Southwest China. Eurasian Geography and Economics (online first).
     

  • Lu YH, Qian JX (corresponding author). Social experiments and the praxis of geographical knowledge production: Emerging architectural practices in urban and regional China. Dialogues in Human Geography (online first).
     

  • Qian JX, Zhang H. Religious economies: Insights from Buddhist innovations in China. In: Woods O, Kong L, Tse J (eds.), Handbook of the Geographies of Religion. Singapore: Springer. 

  2024  

  • Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., Cloke, P. (Eds.) 2024. Introducing Human Geographies (4th Edition). London Routledge. 
     

  • Qian JX, Zeng Y, Tang XQ, Hu XH. 2024. Empowering left-behind places in Southwest China: Participation in coffee value chains as place-based development. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 17(2), 375-392. 
     

  • Qian JX, Lu YH, Li XP, Tang X. 2024. Counterurban sensibilities in the global countryside: The relational making of rurality and heritage in Xizhou Town, Southwest China. Habitat International, 149, 103109. 
     

  • Yu Y, Qian JX (corresponding author). 2024. Being mobile in an era of lockdown: Chinese citizens in the U.S. negotiating homo sacer and the state of exception during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social & Cultural Geography, 25(3), 460-477. 
     

  • Zhang H, Qian JX (corresponding author), Kong L. 2024. “Fly Buddha to Mars”: The co-production between religiosity and science & technology in Longquan Monastery, Beijing. Geoforum, 148, 103948.
     

  • Goodwin, M., Dombroski, K., Qian, J., & Williams, A. 2024. Understanding human geographies. In: Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., & Cloke, P. (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, fourth edition. London: Routledge, 3-14. 
     

  • Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., & Williams, A. 2024. Doing human geographies. In: Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., & Cloke, P. (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, fourth edition. London: Routledge, pp. 15-30. 
     

  • Qian, J., & Williams, A. 2024. Knowing area geographies. In: Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., & Cloke, P. (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, fourth edition. London: Routledge, 186-198. 
     

  • Qian, J., & Williams, A. 2024. Knowing cultural geographies. In: Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., & Cloke, P. (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, fourth edition. London: Routledge, pp. 295-208. 
     

  • Dombroski, K., & Qian, J. 2024. Knowing environmental geographies. In: Dombroski, K., Goodwin, M., Qian, J., Williams, A., & Cloke, P. (eds.), Introducing Human Geographies, fourth edition. London: Routledge, pp. 520-532.

  2023  

  • Wang K, Qian JX (corresponding author), He SJ. 2023. From campaign-style governance to multiple environmentalities: Urban political ecologies of e-waste regulation in Guiyu, China. Urban Geography, 44(7), 1345-1368. 
     

  • Qian JX, Zhang H, Liu YJ. 2023. Everyday geographies of market transition: Agro-science, socio-technical relations, and the contingencies of market making in peri-urban Lhasa, Tibet. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(3), 634-649. 
     

  • He SJ, Qian JX (corresponding author). 2023. Police and politics in aesthetics-based urban governance: Redevelopment and grassroots struggles in Enninglu, Guangzhou, China. Antipode, 55(3), 853-876. 
     

  • Qian JX, Wei L. 2023. A prosaic state? Development visions, banal state encounters and indigenous politics in Southwest China. Territory, Politics, Governance, 11(3), 415-433.
     

  • Qian JX. 2023. Pow Choon-Piew’s contributions to urban China studies. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 44(1), 28-36. 
     

  • Lu YH, Qian JX (corresponding author). 2023. Rural creativity for community revitalization in Bishan Village, China: The nexus of creative practices, cultural revival, and social resilience. Journal of Rural Studies, 97, 255-268. 

  2022  

  • Man E., Palmer D., Qian JX (corresponding author). 2022. The Belt and Road Initiative on Twitter: An Annotated Dataset. Data in Brief, 45, 108711
     

  • Qian JX, Lu YH. 2022. Beyond abstract space: Architectural experiments for dwelling and concrete utopia in urban China. Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, 1(1-2), 152-166.
     

  • Qian JX, Lu YH. 2022. Architecture as social laboratory: Modernity, cultural revival, and architectural experiment in peri-urban China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 46(5), 729-748.
     

  • Zhang H, Qian JX (corresponding author). 2022. Reconciling essential and socially constructed selves: Han Chinese traveling to Tibet and the making of assemblage self. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 63(2), 180-193.
     

  • Wang, K, Qian, JX (corresponding author), He, SJ. 2022. Global destruction networks and hybrid e-waste economies: Practices and embeddedness in Guiyu, China. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54(3), 533-553.
     

  • Qian JX, Zhang H. 2022. University Geography in China: History, opportunities and challenges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(1), 28-33.
     

  • Qian, JX. 2022. Towards a perspective of everyday urbanism in researching migrants in urban China. Cities, 120, 103461
     

  • Florence E, Qian JX. 2022. “Make Contributions and Offer Your Youth for Tomorrow's Dream”: The Establishment of the Shenzhen Migrant Workers Museum. In: Franceschini I, Sorace C (eds.), Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour, pp. 598-607. London and New York: Verso Books.

  2021  

  • Qian JX, Lyu ZY, Guo JWG. 2021. Making a grassroots knowledge economy: Cultural economies and communities of practice in the shanzhai electronics industry. Geoforum, 125, 66-77.
     

  • Wei L, Qian JX, Zhu H. 2021. Rethinking indigenous people as tourists: modernity, cosmopolitanism, and the re-invention of indigeneity. Annals of Tourism Research, 89, 103200.
     

  • Wang K, Qian JX, He SJ. 2021. Contested worldings of e-waste environmental justice: non-human agency and e-waste scalvaging in Guiyu, China. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(7), 2165-2184.
     

  • Qian JX, An N. 2021. Urban theory between political economy and everyday urbanism: desiring machine and power in a saga of urbanization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(4), 679-695.
     

  • Qian JX, Florence E. 2021. Migrant worker museums in China: public cultures of migrant labor in state and grassroots initiatives. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(12), 2706-2724.
     

  • Zhu, H, Qian JX (co-corresponding author). 2021. New theoretical dialogues on migration in China: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(12), 2685-2705.
     

  • Qian JX, Ling J, and He SJ. 2021. Making cities and regions in globalizing East Asia. In: Orum A, Ruiz-Tagle J, Haddock V (eds.), Companion to Urban and Regional Studies, pp. 21-42. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

  2020  

  • Lu YH, Qian JX (corresponding author). (2020) Towards a material approach in rural geography: Architectural experiments in China's rural renaissance and reconstruction movements. Geoforum, 116, 119-129 (IF2018=2.926).
     

  • Wang K, Qian JX, Liu L. (2020) Understanding environmental pollutions of informal e-waste clustering in Global South via multi-scalar regulatory frameworks：a case study of Guiyu town, China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(8): 2802 (IF2018=2.468).
     

  • Gao Q, Qian JX (corresponding author). (2020) Migrant workers in an era of religious revival: industrial capitalism, labour and Christianity in Shenzhen. The China Quarterly, 214: 62-86 (IF2018=2.236).
     

  • Qian JX. (2020) Geographies of public space: variegated publicness, variegated epistemologies. Progress in Human Geography, 44(1): 77-98 (IF2018=6.576).
     

  • Qian, JX, Wei, L. (2020) Development at the edge of difference: rethinking capital and market relations from Lugu Lake, Southwest China. Antipode, 52(1): 246-269 (IF2018=3.289).
     

  • Zhang H, Qian JX. (2020) This-worldly Buddhism: social media and religiosity in China. In: Gomes C, Woods O, Kong L (eds.), Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia: Faith, Flows and Fellowship, pp. 95-121. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. 
     

  • Qian JX. (2020) Urban citizenship. In: Kobayashi, A (ed.), Ho, ELE (Section Editor), International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography, 2nd Edition, Vol. 14, pp. 33-37. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 

  2019  

  • Qian JX, Lu YH. (2019) On the trail of comparative urbanism: square dance and public space in China. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, NS, 44(4): 692-706 (IF2018=3.789).
     

  • Yin D, Qian JX, Zhu H. (2019) Frontier development in the midst of ecological civilization: unravelling the production of maca in Yunnan, China. Geoforum, 106: 144-154 (IF2018=2.926).
     

  • Qian, J. and Tang, X. (2019) “Theorising Small City as Ordinary City: Rethinking Development and Urbanism from China’s Southwest Frontier.” Urban Studies, 56(6): 1215-1233. DOI: 10.1177/0042098018762925 (IF2018=3.272).
     

  • Qian, J. and Guo, J. (2019) “Migrants on Exhibition: The Emergence of Migrant Worker Museums in China as a Neoliberal Experiment on Governance.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(3): 305-323. DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2017.1406788 (IF2018=1.115).
     

  • Qian, J. (2019) “Redeeming   the   Chinese   Modernity?   Zen   Buddhism, Culture-led Development, and Local Governance in Xinxing County, China.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 51(1): 187-205. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16687555 (IF2018=2.459).
     

  • Kong, L. and Qian, J. (2019) “Knowledge Circulation in Urban Geography/ Urban Studies, 1990- 2010: Testing the Discourse of Anglo-American Hegemony through Publication and Citation Patterns.” Urban Studies 56(1): 44-80. DOI: 10.1177/0042098017717205 (IF2018=3.272).
     

  • Qian, J. (2019) “Place Politics.” In Orum, A (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Urban and Regional Studies 3: 1479-1483. Oxford and Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.
     

  • Qian, J and He, S. (2019) “The Right to the city: Theoretical Outline and Reflections on Migrants’ Activism in Post-reform Urban China.” In: T Schwanen, R van Kempen (Eds.), Handbook of Urban Geography 396-410. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
     

  • Qian, J. (2019) “Making Urban Public Space amidst Modern Chinese Urbanism.” In: Yep, R, Wang, J & Johnson, T. (eds.), Handbook on Urban Development in China 156-170. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

  2018  

  • Qian, J. (2018) “Re-visioning the Public in Post-reform Urban China: Poetics and Politics in Guangzhou.” Singapore: Springer.
     

  • Quan, G., Qian, J. (Corresponding Author) and Yuan, Z. (2018) “Multi-scaled Secularization or Postsecular Present? Christianity and Migrant Workers in Shenzhen, China.” Cultural Geographies 25(4): 553-570. DOI: 10.1177/1474474018762814 (IF2018=1.736).
     

  • Qian, J. (2018) “The Possibilities of Cosmopolitan Dialogue.” Dialogues in Human Geography 8(2): 138-142. DOI: 10.1177/2043820618780574 (IF2018=3.875).
     

  • Qian J. and Kong L. 2018. “When Secular Universalism Meets Pluralism: Religious Schools and the Politics of School-based Management in Hong Kong.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(3): 794-810. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1372175 (IF2018=3.037).
     

  • Qian, J. and Kong, L. (2018) “Buddhism Co. Ltd? Epistemology of Religiosity, and the Re-invention of a Buddhist Monastery in Hong Kong.” Environment and Planning D:  Society and Space 36(1): 159-177. DOI: 10.1177/0263775817733268 (IF2018=2.730).
     

  • Wei, L., Qian, J. and Sun, J. (2018) “Self-orientalism, Joke-work and Host-tourist Relations.” Annals of Tourism Research 68: 89-99. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2017.12.003 (IF2018=5.493).
     

  • Kong, L. and Qian, J. (2018) “Dialogue with Religious Life in Asia.” In: Beaumont, J (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity 258-268. London: Routledge.
     

  • Qian, J. (2018) “Towards Critical Urbanism: Urban Public Space in Modern China.” In: M Jayne (Ed.), Chinese urbanism: critical perspectives 17-29. London: Routledge.
     

  • Lv, Z. and Qian J. 2018. “A Coffeehouse Neo-tribe in the making: Exploring a Fluid Cultural Public Space in Post-reform Chinese Urbanism.” In: A Hardy et al. (Eds.), Neo-Tribes - Consumption, Leisure and Tourism 51-67. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

  2017  

  • Yuan, Z., Qian, J. and Zhu, H. (2017) “The Xinjiang Class: Multi-ethnic Encounters in an Eastern Coastal City.” China Quarterly 232: 1094-1115. DOI: 10.1017/S0305741017001096 (IF2018=2.236).
     

  • Yin, D., Qian, J. and Zhu, H. (2017) “Living in the “Ghost City”: Media Discourses and the Negotiation of Home in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China.” Sustainability 9(11): 2029. DOI: 10.3390/su9112029 (IF2018=2.592).
     

  • Qian, J. (2017) “Beyond Heteronormativity? Gay Cruising, Closeted Experiences and Self-disciplining Subject in People’s Park, Guangzhou.” Urban Geography 38(5): 771-794. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2016.1139408 (IF2018=3.567).
     

  • He, S. and Qian, J. (2017) “From an Emerging Market to a Multifaceted Urban Society: Urban China Studies.” Urban Studies 54(4): 827-846. DOI: 10.1177/0042098016675826 (IF2018=3.272).
     

  • Qian, J. and Tang, X. (2017) “Dilemma of Modernity: Interrogating Cross-border Ethnic Identities at China’s Southwest Frontier.” Area 49(1): 52-59. DOI: 10.1111/area.12283 (IF2018=2.133).
     

  • He, S. and Qian, J. (2017) “New Frontiers in Researching Chinese Cities.” In: J Hannigan, G W Richards (Eds.), Handbook of New Urban Studies 462-479. London: Sage.

Awards

  • 2014
    Excellent Research Output Prize, third-tier, awarded by National Tourism Administration, P. R. China
     

  • 2016 
    Excellent Research Prize in Social Sciences, second-tier, awarded by Guangdong Provincial Government
     

  • 2017 
    Excellent Research Output Prize, first-tier, awarded by Urban Geography Specialty Committee, Chinese Geographical Society
     

  • 2017 
    Excellent Research Output Award for Higher Education Institutions, second-tier, awarded by Ministry of Education, P. R. China
     

  • 2018 
    Area Prize for New Research in Geography, awarded by Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers and Wiley Blackwell
     

  • 2018 
    Wu Chuanjun Award for Excellent Papers in Human and Economic Geography, first-tier, awarded by Chinese Geographical Society
     

  • 2022
    Gill Memorial Award, awarded by Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers
     

  • 2023 
    Ashby Prize for the most innovative papers published in 2022, awarded by the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
     

  • 2024
    HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award, awarded by the University of Hong Kong

Research Grants

As Principal Investigator (PI)

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  • Cultural economic geographies of high-quality tea in China: Symbolic values, socio-technical networks, and geographical implications. Principal Investigator, Hong Kong Research Grants Council – General Research Fund, Project No. 17606724, HK$ 900,216, 2025-2027
     

  • The social use of culture: Empowering community through culture-based initiatives amidst China's rural renaissance and revitalization. HKU Seed Fund for Basic Research, Principal Investigator, HK$ 46,520, 2024-2025
     

  • Lived religiosity in secular modernity: A case study of traditional Chinese religions in Hong Kong, principal investigator, Social Sciences Internal Seed Grant Scheme, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, HK$147,776, 2024-2026
     

  • HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award scheme, principal investigator, The University of Hong Kong, HK$300,000, 2024-2026
     

  • Sustainability experiments in urban China: Everyday negotiations, social-technical transitions, and situated environmental knowledge, principal investigator, Urban Systems Institute Fellowship Grant, The University of Hong Kong, HK$240,000, 2023-2025
     

  • Envisioning sustainable urban and regional futures in China: socio-technical transitions, experimentations, and everyday negotiations, principal investigator, Seed fund for strategic interdisciplinary research, The University of Hong Kong, HK600,000, 2022-2025
     

  • Urban development at a contested frontier: state, space and urban aptitude in Lhasa, Tibet, Principal Investigator, Hong Kong Research Grants Council – General Research Fund, Project No. 17601021, HK$ 681,829, 2021-2024
     

  • Architecture as social laboratory: Socio-material entanglements and experimental practices amid China’s urban and regional transformation, Principal Investigator, Hui Oi Chow Trust Fund, HK$66,900, 2021-2023
     

  • A social and cultural geographical exploration of Anthropocene: human-land interactions, environmental governance and social experiments, Principal Investigator, National Natural Science Foundation of China, General Scheme, No. 42071171, CN￥ 550,000, 2021-2024 [中国国家自然科学基金面上项目，人类世理论的社会文化地理学探索：人地互动、环境治理与社会实验，55万元人民币，主持人]
     

  • Development as state-building: emerging market relations and economic subjectivities in Lulang, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, Principal Investigator, Seed Fund for Basic Research, The University of Hong Kong, HK$83,200, 2020-2022
     

  • China’s emerging geographies of religion: Market culture and the making of entrepreneurial religion in Mahayana Buddhism, Principal Investigator, Hong Kong Research Grants Council – General Research Fund, Project No. 17604319, HK$ 728,102, 2019-2022
     

  • Cultural mechanisms and spatial processes of local technological innovation: a cultural economic geographical perspective, Principal Investigator, National Natural Science Foundation of China, General Scheme, No. 41871124, CN￥ 575,000, 2019-2022 [中国国家自然科学基金面上项目，本土技术创新的文化机制和空间过程：文化经济地理学的视角，57.5万元人民币，主持人]
     

  • Rural Renaissance and Reconstruction Movement in China: culture-based intervention, post-rurality, planetary urbanization, Principal Investigator, Hui Oi Chow Trust Fund, HK$ 85,000, 2018-2020
     

  • The Shanzhai (Copycat) Phenomenon and Grassroots Innovation in China’s Consumer Electronics Industry: A Cultural Economic Geography Approach, Principal Investigator, Seed fund for basic research, The University of Hong Kong, No. 201703159004, HKD 14,8000, 2017-2019
     

  • Spatial practices and the social construction of public space in the post-reform context: the case of Guangzhou, Principal Investigator, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Young Scholar Scheme, No. 41401139, CN￥230, 000, 2015-2017 [中国国家自然科学基金青年项目，转型期中国城市公共空间的空间实践与社会建构：以广州为例，23万元人民币，主持人]

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As Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)

​

  • Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobilities on the Belt and Road. (Co-PI, Collaborative Research Fund (CRF), C7052-18GF, UGC/RGC Hong Kong, Project Coordinator: David Palmer, HK$ 6,252,078, 2019-2022).

     

  • Regional Integration and Development based on the Perspective of Human-place: Social Construction of Nature in Transitional Guangdong. (Co-PI, Collaborative Research Scheme, Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, 2018B030312004, CN￥3,000,000, 2019-2023). [广东省自然科学基金研究团队项目，基于“人-地”视角的区域融合与发展：转型期广东自然的社会建构过程、机制及其效应研究，300万元人民币，团队核心成员] 

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