The Faculties of Arts, Law and Social Sciences will be relocated to the new Centennial Campus in 2012. From this issue, we will introduce the space allocation and new features of each building, and learn how the Faculties will benefit from their new homes. Let’s start with the Faculty of Social Sciences and its Dean, Professor Ian Holliday.

Currently, the five departments and ten research centres of the Faculty are scattered all over the Main Campus, the Sassoon Road Campus, Sai Ying Pun and the Kennedy Town Centre. “In many cases, research ideas and collaboration will emerge from informal social interaction among colleagues,” says Professor Holliday. “The existing spatial arrangements have, in some ways, not facilitated these kinds of interaction. I hope that in the future, when we are under the same roof, communication among colleagues will be much more efficient in terms of research, teaching and administration.”  

The Faculty will occupy eight floors of the building, above the Learning Commons and the centrally-timetabled classrooms. The spatial allocation of departments and units in the new building will facilitate inter-disciplinary collaboration. “The Faculty Office will be on the top floor and there will be a large conference room similar to the size of the existing Council Chamber.  There will also be a staff resource common room, multi-media and printing units, as well as tutorial and seminar rooms.” 

“The two floors below (Levels 6 and 7) will be a socio-political centre, which houses Geography, Sociology and Politics and Public Administration. Further down on Levels 4 and 5 will be the research centres and the workstations of the graduate students. We think that by grouping research students of different departments together, a kind of ‘Faculty Research School’ will be developed. Most of the research units, including the Public Opinion Programme and the Social Sciences Research Centre, will be on these floors.” added Professor Holliday.

“The ‘Psycho-social Centre’ will be on Levels 2 and 3, and both the Departments of Psychology and Social Work & Social Administration will be able to use the Counselling floor on Level 1 for teaching, research and service to the members of the community. I hope this will help strengthen our engagement with the community.”  “Overall, there will be enormous intangible benefits of moving into the new campus in terms of more interaction among faculty members and better communication. I hope that a stronger sense of Faculty identity will also emerge,” concluded Professor Holliday.