New Funding for Two HKU Law Knowledge Exchange Impact Projects 2016-2017

Congratulations to Benny Tai and Amanda Whitfort who were awarded HKU Knowledge Exchange Impact Project Funding 2016-2017.  Each were awarded approximately HKD100,000.  Tai's project, "Post-exam Rule of Law Seminars in Secondary Schools", is part of the Faculty of Law's Rule of Law Education Project which started in 2012 and was recently awarded the Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award 2016.  HKU law students serve as interns to the Project and will conduct school visits and lessons to up to 2,000 secondary school students at 10 to 12 schools.  Whitfort's project, "Wildlife Crime: Knowledge Transfer for Informed Sentencing", aims to develop and provide resources (e.g. dossiers and workshops) to those prosecuting wildlife crime to improve their capacity to inform and assist the court in these cases.

    The Faculty of Law recently published a booklet titled, Knowledge Exchange and Impact 2016.  It profiles 11 case studies and 22 colleagues whose research has had impact in the local and overseas community. The impact has been in the areas of human rights, community legal information, judicial studies, children's issues, animal welfare, competition law, clinical legal education, financial technologies, rule of law education, political reform and actuarial assessment of damages for personal injuries.  In my opening message as Associate Dean (Research), I wrote

"Knowledge exchange (KE) is the sharing of knowledge with non-academic communities to realise meaningful research impact. For legal academics, those communities typically include the courts, government bureaus and bodies, international organisations, law reform agencies, legal practitioners, non-governmental organisations, educational institutions, and, of course, individuals with legal problems.

Our Faculty has a long track record of KE with local and international communities, and this booklet captures more recent impactful work undertaken by colleagues. Going forwards, the Faculty’s KE strategy aims for more international impact that directly contributes to law and policy making. With the assistance of our KE Manager, we will continue our pro-active approach of identifying evidence of and opportunities for research impact."

The booklet can be read and downloaded here.