Douglas KERR (Fellow)
Before his retirement in 2016, Douglas Kerr was Professor in the School of English at The University of Hong Kong.
Douglas Kerr has an MA from Cambridge University and PhD (Comparative Literature) from the University of Warwick, and has worked in Hong Kong since 1979. He is a former Head of the English Department and former Dean of the Arts Faculty. He has taught extensively, from Malory to Mo, but with a concentration on nineteenth and twentieth century literature in English. His research interests in literary history include the literature of colonialism in Asia, the literature of war and of travel, and the history of literary modernism, and RGC-funded projects on Arthur Conan Doyle (completed) and on Joseph Conrad.
He supervised research students for the M.Phil and Ph.D degrees, working on topics such as: Kipling and journalism; Hong Kong Eurasian memoirs; eugenics and fictional dystopias; postcolonial short fiction; 19thc governess narratives; Thomas Hardy and ethics; the writings of Leonard Woolf; British leftist writers in China; school stories; Peter Pan; Mapping modernism; George Orwell.
Douglas Kerr was also co-presenter on RTHK's programme The Big Idea, which explored the history, meaning and significance of ideas in contemporary society (episodes can be accessed here).