About me

PHYLLIS WONG

Phyllis King Shui WONG (黃敬歲) Ph.D., R.S.W
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Work,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Telephone: (852) 3943 5480
E-mail: pkswong@swk.cuhk.edu.hk

Curriculum Vitae

Social Worker in the Disability Field

I fight passionately for equality and dignity; that is why I am a social worker.

My ‘social work in disability’ journey started with a social work degree. Since then, I have enjoyed walking with people alongside disabilities and my life has become fuller and richer along the road.

I adhere to the motto ‘Start where the person is’. That means to feel what a person with disability feels. I chose to fight for equal opportunities, for empowerment – putting myself in a facilitating role to enable people with disabilities (PWDs) and their families to fight for equality from the bottom up, and to facilitate them to exercise personal self-determination.

As a social worker, a social work teacher and a social work researcher, I have had opportunities to commit myself to making a difference to the lives of PWDs. It is my good fortune that I have always been able to fulfil my missions.

Social Work Educator & Researcher

I was the fieldwork supervisor and social work practice teacher in the Department of Social Work & Social Administration at HKU from 2000 to 2015. Since January 2016, I am assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at CUHK.

I would like to use the acronym EQUAL – Empowerment, Quality of Life, Uniqueness, Advocacy and Learning – to explain what I have done in my university journey. I believe in empowerment in teaching, research and social action. Over the last decade, I, together with PWDs and my students, have advocated enhancing PWDs’ quality of life and addressing their uniqueness. And I found the journey to be a learning process through which I have continuously learned from PWDs.

Traveller

I am an independent traveller and have travelled to 33 countries across Asia, Europe, America and Australia since I was 18. To me, travelling is always a journey of exploration, discovery and learning both about new cultures and peoples, and myself. Through travelling, I have become sensitive to the differences between cultures and learned to respect differences among individuals and the diversity of societies and cultures. I treasure these insights and I try to internalize them as my core values in both my professional and personal life.