sociology@cuhk.edu.hk
About the Seminar:
Does exposure to generative artificial intelligence simply reflect existing occupational hierarchies, or does it constitute a new dimension of occupational differentiation? This study examines how the alignment between occupational tasks and large language model capabilities maps onto established structures of work and inequality in China.
Drawing on task descriptions from China’s national occupational classification and individual survey data collected in Guangzhou in 2023–2024, the study connects occupational measures of AI exposure, task composition, and digitalization with workers’ social characteristics and resources. The findings reveal substantial but incomplete overlap between generative AI exposure and established occupational hierarchies. Task composition and digitalization explain approximately half of the variation in exposure, while persistent differences remain among occupations with comparable socioeconomic standing. Exploratory analysis identifies six occupational profiles with distinct combinations of exposure and task characteristics. These profiles differ systematically in education, income, digital tool use, employment security, and social composition, with educational qualifications marking the clearest social boundary.
The concept of “embedded differentiation” captures this coexistence of structural embeddedness and distinctions within established hierarchies. By treating exposure as potential technological reach rather than observed adoption or job displacement, this study offers a sociological perspective on how generative AI intersects with occupational differentiation and social stratification.
About the Speaker:
Prof. Yuxiao WU is a professor of sociology in School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University. He employs quantitative methods to examine various dimensions of social stratification, including income and wealth inequality, educational and occupational attainment, and social mobility. His current research examines how digital technologies and artificial intelligence shape labor market structures and patterns of social stratification and mobility. His work has been published in various journals, including British Journal of Sociology, Chinese Sociological Review, American Educational Research Journal, Social Sciences in China, Chinese Journal of Sociology, etc. For further details, please refer to the attached poster. Upon successful registration, the access details will be sent to your registered email address automatically.
Should you have any questions, please contact us at (852) 3943 6271 or via email at sociology@cuhk.edu.hk
ccfs@cuhk.edu.hk
About the Seminar:
Traditional research on hiring discrimination relies heavily on CV-based correspondence studies, offering limited insight into biases during interactive interview stages. To address this gap, this presentation introduces a novel experimental approach using AI-manipulated videos in multi-stage factorial survey experiments with hiring personnel. By swapping facial features in standardized application videos while holding speech, content, facial expressions, and gestures constant, this approach isolates the effects of visual attributes to uncover complex evaluative biases. The approach is illustrated based on two empirical studies in Germany. Study 1 (N = 493) analyzes the effects of physical attractiveness across gendered occupational contexts. Results show that while all attractive applicants receive higher competence ratings overall, men consistently benefit from a beauty premium regardless of context, whereas women benefit only in female-typed roles. Study 2 (N = 1,291) investigates the effects of ethnic appearance by swapping faces across German, Asian, and African candidates with identical, high-standard German credentials. While CV screening shows no initial invitation differences, introducing video presentations provides effects for minority candidates consistent with statistical discrimination theory—though individual evaluator prejudices remain largely persistent. Together, these studies demonstrate that deepfake video experiments provide a powerful, highly controlled framework for examining multi-stage hiring dynamics, complementing traditional audit approaches and opening rich avenues for experimental research on social stratification and beyond.
About the Speaker:
Tobias Wolbring is a professor of economic sociology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research is located at the intersection of sociology, economics, and psychology. He has published several textbooks and papers in high-ranking journals, such as Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Sociology of Education, and Sociological Methods & Research. He is currently an Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong and has received several awards, including the Best Dissertation Award from the German Sociological Association and the Robert K. Merton Prize from the International Network of Analytical Sociologists.
csspfs@cuhk.edu.hk
sociology@cuhk.edu.hk
About the Seminar:
Charisma is often theorized as a form of cultic insularity consisting of “bonds” between leaders and followers. Its world-historical significance, however, stems not from this inward-intimacy, but rather from its aggressive outward posture which occasionally radiates through traditional and/or rational-legal social orders, destabilizing and overturning them. This article focalizes charisma’s consumptive leading edge by distinguishing and describing the incredulous onlooker—a type of non-believing institutional elite who exists at the interface between the charismatic community and wider society. Incredulous onlookers intend to quash charismatic movements, but their interventions counterintuitively (to them) work to augment charismatic potency and proliferate charismatic rupture. They do this in two ways. First, their affective signals of shock, exasperation, and moral outrage lend a sense of gleeful wonder (even “miraculousness”) to the incipient leader’s early successes, even if such successes are initially relatively minor. Second, as institutional-organizational mouthpieces, incredulous onlookers widen the aperture for extraordinary expression within the institutional spheres they represent, bringing their full interlocutory capacity within reach of the charismatic leader. Together, these factors account for charisma’s revolutionary potential. Observational and interview data reveal that incredulous onlookers have played a key role in buoying and propelling the “Trump phenomenon.”
About the Speaker:
Prof. Paul Joosse is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. His work on Max Weber, political legitimation, and gender has been published in American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and British Journal of Sociology, among others. He is currently an Editor in Chief at the ASA journal Sociological Theory. He is the recipient of the ASA’s Clifford Geertz Prize for best article in cultural sociology, the ASA’s Junior Theorist Award, and the International Sociological Association’s Junior Theorist Prize.
For further details, please refer to the attached poster. Upon successful registration, the access details will be sent to your registered email address automatically.
Should you have any questions, please contact us at (852) 3943-6271 or via email at sociology@cuhk.edu.hk.
ccfs@cuhk.edu.hk
About the Seminar:
Fertility decline is described with great precision and explained in rich detail, yet what is still missing is a method for changing the behaviour that produces it. Prediction is well developed, explanation is developing, and intervention is widely acknowledged in principle but left without methodology. This is the gap that behavioural demography is proposed to fill.
Behavioural demography is an emerging subdiscipline at the intersection of demography and behavioural science. It treats behaviour, rather than attitude, intention or the aggregate rate, as the primary unit of analysis. Behavioural mechanisms can be diagnosed systematically across the demographic life course, and they can be deliberately modified through evidence-based intervention. The talk presents a repeatable framework, drawing on COM-B and the Behaviour Change Wheel, that takes a defined problem through diagnosis to an intervention that can be tested.
Behavioural demography covers the whole pathway, from entering a first romantic relationship to conception and birth, and each stage can be diagnosed in its own right. This talk works through one of them, family formation, which in East Asian societies, including Hong Kong, is where the pathway breaks earliest, long before any decision about a child is reached. Reading that stage through capability, opportunity and motivation shows which constraint is binding, and therefore which kind of intervention could move it, and which could not.
The talk closes with what this opens for research: a diagnosable, testable account of family behaviour, and the questions the field now faces, from behavioural data and measurement to simulating interventions before they are funded. It will be of interest to researchers working on family and fertility behaviour in any context, and to those designing or evaluating family policy.
About the Speaker:
Professor Jarosław Przeperski is a researcher at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. He works at the intersection of behavioural science, family research and public policy, and is developing behavioural demography, an approach that brings behavioural diagnosis and intervention design to low fertility, partnership formation and family support. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Power, Politics, and Social Work (Oxford University Press, 2024) and edits book series with Routledge and Springer. He publishes in international journals on family support and decision making, has led research grants in family policy and social welfare, and advises public institutions in Poland on family policy.
The Department of Sociology will participate in the CUHK Information Day for Undergraduate Admissions on 17 October 2026 (Saturday). Join us to discover sociology through admission talks, interactive games, exhibitions, and conversations with our students and alumni. Whether you are exploring your study options or simply curious about sociology, we look forward to meeting you on campus.
Sociology Admission Talk
Meet our faculty members and learn more about the Sociology programme, student life, admission opportunities, and future career pathways. Questions are welcome!
Time:
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Venue:
LT2, UG/F, Sino Building, Chung Chi College
Explore Sociology beyond the Talk
Drop by our exhibitions, try out some fun sociology games, and chat with current students and alumni to hear about their experiences at CUHK and beyond.
Time:
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Venue:
4/F, Sino Building, Chung Chi College
Useful links:
CUHK Information Day 2026 (CUHK official homepage)