The 12th conference of RaAM – the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM12) is organized and hosted by Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 27-30 June 2018. RaAM is an open community of researchers of metaphor, metonymy, and other forms of figurative expression. This is the first time that the conference of RaAM is held at Asia. The theme of RaAM12 is Metaphor across contexts and domains: from description to application. The plenary speech by Prof. Elena Semino is entitled: Applying Metaphor in Healthcare. Prof. Semino is Professor and Head, Linguistics and English Language Department, and Director, Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science, Lancaster University. Her research interests include stylistics, metaphor theory and analysis, and the medical humanities/health communication. She will discuss in her plenary the applicational aspects of metaphor research.