Museum and nation-building: Hong Kong history, communities, and identities represented in Hong Kong museums (1997-2017)

In the nineteenth century, modern museums began to play a public role as a social apparatus of nation-states to educate and ‘civilize the nation’s citizens’. Scholars also argue public museums in various nation-states at different points in their history put their nations and the world on display differently. In 1997, the sovereignty of Hong Kong was officially transferred from the UK to the People’s Republic of China, an event commonly referred to as the Handover. This research aims to analyse how Hong Kong public museums narrate Hong Kong history, culture and identity through policy review, interviews, content analysis and textual analysis.