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I arrived in Hong Kong in December 2003 after completing my PhD studies in St. Petersburg, Russia, and have researched and taught in this vibrant city ever since. My areas of expertise and research interests broadly include interactional approaches to professional communication, in particular in healthcare and business settings. In the past few years I have been working on a number of research projects studying social interactions in the genetic counselling and prenatal screening contexts in Hong Kong in collaboration with public hospitals and the Clinical Genetic Services of Hong Kong. I have also been studying business interactions in a number of large international corporations and privately-owned businesses.Currently I lead the Health Communication Research Cluster at the Center for the Humanities and Medicine, HKU where I also serve as a Board Member; and I am a member of the Consortium on Clinical Genetics and Genomic Medicine (Hong Kong West Cluster (HKWC)/HKU) that strives to improve genetic and genomic services in Hong Kong. Besides work, I also love spending time with my two sons and enjoy trail running around Asia.

Srikant Sarangi is Professor in Language and Communication and Director of the Health Communication Research Centre at Cardiff University, Wales, UK (www.cf.ac.uk/encap/research/hcrc). He is also Professor in Language and Communication at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway; Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Aalborg University, Denmark; and Honorary Professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in discourse analysis and applied linguistics; language and identity in public life and institutional/professional communication studies (e.g., healthcare, social welfare, bureaucracy, education etc.). He has held several project grants (Funding bodies include The Wellcome Trust, The Leverhulme Trust, ESRC) to study various aspects of health communication, e.g., genetic counselling, HIV/AIDS and telemedicine. The other areas of healthcare research include communication in primary care, palliative care, with particular reference to assessment of consulting and communication skills. He is author and editor of 12 books, 5 journal special issues and has published nearly 200 journal articles and book chapters. He is the founding editor of Communication & Medicine, editor of TEXT & TALK: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse and Communication Studies (formerly TEXT) as well as co-editor (with C. N. Candlin) of Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice. He is also general editor (with C. N. Candlin) of three book series[es]: Studies in Applied Linguistics; Studies in Language and Communication; and Studies in Communication in Organisations and Professions. He serves as an editorial board member for other journals and book series[es], and as a consulting advisor at many national and international levels. His involvement in professional societies include membership of the Executive Committee of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL, 1997-2002) and Member-at-Large of the Executive Board of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA, 1999-2002). He is also the founder of the annual interdisciplinary conference series, Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET) and Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP). Over the last ten years, he has held visiting academic attachments in many parts of the world.

My main research interests are professional and medical communication. I am particularly interested in leadership, and the crucial role that communication plays in leadership performance. I have researched and published widely on various aspects of leadership discourse, gender, the multiple functions and strategic uses of humour, politeness and impoliteness, identity construction, the role of culture, decision making and advice giving, and other aspects of workplace discourse in a range of professional and medical contexts.