HUMA PhD student wins the 2025 LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award

HUMA PhD student wins the 2025 LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award

Ms. Kangdi Liu, an MPhil graduate and a recent HKPFS awardee at HUMA, has been awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award for 2025 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). Under the guidance of her supervisor Prof. Quentin Zhen Qin, Kangdi's MPhil thesis, titled "Mandarin-speaking Older Adults' Memory Consolidation of Non-native Tonal Contrasts: The Role of Encoding Strength," showcases the high-quality psycholinguistics research nurtured within HUMA.

The LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award recognizes the outstanding theses that contribute to any area in linguistics, including MA theses, MPhil theses, and PhD theses. Kangdi's thesis presents a comprehensive work on perceptual learning and memory consolidation of Cantonese tones in elderly learners aged around 60, who may experience age-related declines in learning and memory. Kangdi will give a presentation of her thesis at the 2025 Annual Research Forum of LSHK on 6 December 2025.