Sallie Hoi-Yin Lau

PhD Researcher (RG Power, Knowledge, and Servitude at Sea" (POESIS))

German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS)
Room 2.022
Niebuhrstraße 5
D-53113 Bonn
Phone: 
Email:

PhD Project: "Locating the Labours of Care and Repair in Large-Scale Coastal Restoration Projects"

Supervisors: Dr. Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Prof. Dr. Anna Katharina Hornigde 

Sallie Lau
© Sallie Lau

I am a doctoral candidate working in the POESIS: Power, Knowledge, and Servitude at Sea Research Group under BCDSS and IDOS. I am primarily interested in the intersection of work, environment, and just transitions, particularly in Southeast Asia. Beyond academia, my practice is shaped by my participation in collectives in Hong Kong in solidarity with student, activist, worker and research communities in articulating, mapping out, visualising, and imagining heterodox worldviews and alternative ways of "doing" beyond what dominant economic structures impose upon us/them.

Academic Profile

Locating the Labours of Care and Repair in Large-Scale Coastal Restoration Projects

      Ecological restoration is emerging as a popular means to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. Caring for and repairing nature is framed as a win-win strategy for both environmental and social change, thus, restoration projects are being scaled up and out. However, a growing body of "critical restoration" scholarship points out that repairing nature is a non-neutral act. Large-scale restoration can exacerbate socio-economic inequalities and power hierarchies via green grabbing and through the unequal distribution of restoration benefits, efforts and labour.

      Following feminist economic geographers who trace how everyday practices of care are transformed by global, neoliberal power relations, I re-conceptualize restoration projects as care spaces to analyze the labour dynamics, dependencies, and asymmetries within, asking how the labours of repairing and maintaining ecosystems are shaped by assumptions of class, ethnicity, and gender. My project is a regional, comparative, ethnographic case study of large-scale marine restoration projects in Asia to examine what forms of restoration work are rendered visible, who gets to decide which methodologies and practices are care-full, and how different labouring bodies - both human and non-human - are enfolded or excluded in structures of care (e.g. labour protections, welfare systems, biodiversity conventions). Weaving together science and technology studies (STS), political ecology, feminist geography, and environmental labour studies, I hope contribute to place-based re-imaginings and interventions of care and repair work, and support the development of restoration science, politics, and practices that are truly win-win.

      2018–2020
      Master in Marine Affairs, University of Washington

      2013–2017
      BSc Hons in Marine Biology and Creative Writing, Dalhousie University

      2025–2026
      Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong
      Courses taught:
      • All You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Humans
      • Societies on the Water
      • Human, Animal, and Planetary Wellness

      2020–2021
      Research Assistant, Ocean Nexus, University of Washington

      2020–2021
      Research Assistant, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Polytechnic University of Hong Kong

      2017–2018
      Research Assistant, School of Biological Sciences, University of Hong Kong

      • 2023. With A. Chan. "The tidal wave of new unions during the Hong Kong resistance movement of 2019–20: Toward social movement trade unionism." The China Journal 90: 106–218.
      • 2022. With S. Klein, J. S.  Lee, S. Courtney, L. Morehead-Hillman, B. Lewis-Smith, D. Sarna- Wojcicki, and C. Woelfle-Hazard. "Transforming restoration science: Multiple knowledges and community research cogeneration in the Klamath and Duwamish Rivers." The American Naturalist 20(1): 156–167. DOI: 10.1086/720153.
      • 2022. With T. Mallory and A. Chubb. "China's ocean culture and consciousness: Constructing a maritime great power narrative." Marine Policy 144. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105229.
      • 2021. With M. Fabinyi, A. Wu, T. Mallory, K. Barclay, K. Walsh, and W. Dressler. "China’s Blue Economy: A State Project of Modernisation." Journal of Environment & Development 30: 127–148. DOI: 10.1177/107049652199587.