Research in the Department of GIS involves cross-national and multidisciplinary study of China's foreign policy; China-European Union (EU) and China-Africa relations; European and Asian regionalism; Eastern European politics; security studies; Hong Kong-EU relations; cross-strait relations; studies of social / cultural / political developments in selected European areas; comparative urban studies; and innovative pedagogies. Funded projects examine, for example, labor politics, social protests, civil society, disaster management, local governance, and leadership transition in mainland China, as well as the Hong Kong Transition Project's study of two fundamental aspects of the transition of Hong Kong from a British colony to China's Special Administrative Region (SAR), namely, democratization and socio-political volatility, and contentious and identity politics.
In recent years, the Department has secured over HK$30.2 million funding, and developed collaboration with the European Commission (such as a 5-year HK$15.2 million project in 2012-2017), the World Values Survey Association, and other academic institutions and government agencies internationally and locally. Department staff, in their capacity as principal research investigators, have received grants from the General Research Fund, Early Career Scheme and Faculty Development Scheme, the Central Policy Unit, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Jean-Monnet Fellowship, the Macau Foundation, and the University Grants Committee.
The Department actively supports the research cluster development across the Faculty of Social Sciences (Smart Societies) and the University (Creative Media / Practice, Health & Drug Discovery, Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence). It also manages the Comparative Governance and Policy Research Centre (CGPC).