Prof. KWOK LAI Yuk Ching Sylvia (郭黎玉晶)

Registered Social Worker

Fellow, Hong Kong Academy of Social Work

Visiting Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health

Convenor, Positive Education Laboratory

Professor Sylvia Kwok is Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences (SS) at the City University of Hong Kong. Sylvia obtained her Bachelor and Master Degree in Social Work from the University of Hong Kong, and her PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is currently Associate Dean in the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies. She has served as Associate Head (Postgraduate Education and Research) in SS from 2022 to 2023. She is listed among the top 2% of the most highly cited scientists in Social Work in the world in 2022 and 2023, according to metrics compiled by Stanford University.

Sylvia’s research mainly focuses on the family ecological and positive psychological factors that are related to anxiety, depression, suicide, and wellbeing of children and adolescents. She has published over 70 papers related to children and adolescent mental health issues, parenting and positive education in high-impact international refereed journals. She has got over HK$132M research grants from government and non-government funding sources. From 2021 to 2024, she got 3 General Research Fund projects funded by the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong. She has supervised 9 PhD students, 6 have graduated, and 2 of them got the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.

As the convenor of the Positive Education Laboratory, Sylvia has collaborated with over 300 local schools (from pre-primary schools to universities), social welfare agencies, and corporates to promote positive education for the students, teachers, parents, employees, and the community. She has published over 10 manuals on positive education that have been uploaded to the positive education laboratory website http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/ss_posed.

Sylvia was granted the Second Class National Teaching Achievement Award in the 2022 Higher Education (Undergraduate) Award by the Ministry of Education in China, the Teaching Award (Team) by the University Grants Committee in 2021, Teaching Excellence Award Finalist (Individual) in 2021, Teaching Innovation Award (Team) in 2019 and Excellence in Knowledge Transfer Award in 2013 by the City University of Hong Kong. She also got the Distinguished Alumni Award (Social Sciences) from the University of Hong Kong in 2020. Locally, Sylvia is Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Social Work. She has been the assessment panel member of RGC Competitive Research Funding Schemes for the Local Self-financing Degree Sector (Humanities and Social Sciences) since 2021. Internationally, she is the regional representative lead in the Positive Education Division of the International Positive Psychology Association.

• Positive psychology
• Mental health (suicide, anxiety, depression)
• Children and adolescents
• Families (parent-child, marital relationship)