In the past decade, Evelyn’s research has focused on how migrant domestic workers occupy public space in Hong Kong, and how this unique spatial phenomenon is demonstrative of the social, spatial and economic inequality experienced by workers locally and globally. Her upcoming monograph titled: Spatial Agency and Occupation: Foreign Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong discusses this topic extensively as part of the Edinburgh Political Economy series published by Edinburgh University Press (late 2023-early 2024). This monograph is produced as part of the General Research Fund project ‘Domestic Work in Hong Kong: the Intersection of Gender, Labour and Space’ (University Grants Committee, Hong Kong, 2022-24)
Evelyn’s research also reflects on the challenges of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in design research in cross-cultural contexts. She collaborates with other scholars from the Faculty of Arts in interdisciplinary projects creating multimedia outcomes such as digital image archives, podcasts, and video interviews (Initiation Grant for Faculty Niche Research Areas, HKBU, 2020-21). One project that is upcoming titled: Untold Hong Kong Stories: Multimedia Stories from the Margins, focuses on celebrating people of ethnic minority backgrounds in Hong Kong and their stories are produced as a podcast series and compiled into a comic book (Initiation Grant for Faculty Niche Research Areas, HKBU, 2022-24). Evelyn is a co-supervisor of PhD students Tim Pattinson and Debe Sham.
Evelyn has taught extensively across Dip, BA and MA level in design school and architecture school in exhibition design, spatial design, experience design, architecture theory and other studio practices in Hong Kong and Australia. At AVA, she teaches and creates the curriculum for Experience Design, which integrates a Service-Learning component that generates impactful outcomes for community beyond the university grounds. She is the co-ordinator for the Socially Engaged Arts division of the Social Transformation theme group in the Shared Campus network and has been creating activities and curricula with international staff on the topics of unlearning, decolonisation and care in interdisciplinary and multicultural contexts since 2020.