PhD in Law at HKU 2018-2019 (Main Round Deadline: 1 Dec 2017)

Research Postgraduate Programme 2018-19 

Our Faculty is Hong Kong’s first law school and one of the most prestigious law schools internationally. It celebrates 50 years in 2019. Today, the Faculty has over 70 full-time academic staff members and more than 1,500 students studying in our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, including the research postgraduate programmes leading to the degrees of Master of Philosophy (MPhil), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Doctor of Legal Science (SJD).

Faculty of Law building

The Faculty of Law places great emphasis on the quality of postgraduate research education, and values innovative, high-impact and leading-edge research within and across disciplines. Our graduates include the current Attorney General of Sri Lanka, partners in law firms, and law professors in Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, Hong Kong, Macau, China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. We provide an intellectually stimulating environment nurturing students' intellectual and creative abilities. Students study in our modern 11-storey Cheng Yu Tung Tower situated next to the entrance of the HKU MTR station. Visit our website for more details on our programmes and the Graduate School website for information on scholarship funding and application submission.

We have two departments and five research centres/institutes dedicated to the study of public law, financial law, Chinese law, law and technology, and medical legal ethics. 

Highlights

✫ Ranking 18 of 100 top law schools in the 2018 THE World University Ranking for Law 

✫ Consistently Ranking Top 20 in QS World Ranking for Law, 2013 to 2017 

✫ Ranked 10 in Social Sciences Research Network’s Top 500 International Law Schools, Oct 2017 

✫ Editorship of Three Major International Law Journals: Hong Kong Law Journal, Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, Law and Literature  

✫ Held more than 180 public events in 2016 to 2017 featuring distinguished jurists, academics and practitioners from around the world

✫ Hosting major international conferences on public law (ICON-S), animal welfare law, and legal philosophy in 2018 and 2019 

✫ Two Fulbright Scholars (Hong Kong Awards) for 2018-2019 

✫ Two Outstanding Research Postgraduate Student Awards for 2015-2016

Major Research Areas for Supervision

✪ Chinese law and legal developments, including those related to the Belt and Road initiative 

✪ Corporate and financial law, including FinTech and RegTech 

✪ Comparative constitutional and public law, including human rights and empirical methods 

✪ Law and economics, particularly in competition law 

✪ Alternative dispute resolution 

✪ Innovation, technology, and intellectual property law 

✪ Legal ethics including medical legal ethics and the legal profession 

Published books by our research postgraduate students

For more details of our research areas and academic staff, please visit our website and the HKU Legal Scholarship Blog. If you have further questions, you may email them to lawpgs@hku.hk.