Congratulations to Dr Anya Adair, the recipient of the Rosie Young 90 Medal for Outstanding Young Woman Scholar 2022!

In celebration of Professor Rosie Young’s 90th birthday on October 23, 2020, the Rosie Young 90 Medal for Outstanding Young Woman Scholar was established to honour her immense achievements and contributions to the University.  The Medal recognises talented young academics and encourage them to follow in her illustrious footsteps for many, many years to come.

Congratulations to Dr Anya Adair, the recipient of the Rosie Young 90 Medal for Outstanding Young Woman Scholar 2022.

Dr Anya Adair

Assistant Professor (cross appointed with Faculty of Arts)

"Dr Adair is a brilliant scholar who is also an outstanding collaborator and communicator – someone who is forging an international scholarly reputation in her specialisation while networking across disciplines and Faculties."

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New Book by Anya Adair & Andrew Rabin: Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer, Boydell Press)

Law, Literature, and Social Regulation in Early Medieval England
Anya Adair & Andrew Rabin
Series: Anglo-Saxon Studies
Boydell & Brewer, Boydell Press

Copyright Date: 2023

288 pp.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2x4kpjc
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2x4kpjc

Book Description: Valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society. Pre-Conquest English law was among the most sophisticated in early medieval Europe. Composed largely in the vernacular, it played a crucial role in the evolution of early English identity and exercised a formative influence on the development of the Common Law. However, recent scholarship has also revealed the significant influence of these legal documents and ideas on other cultural domains, both modern and pre-modern. This collection explores the richness of pre-Conquest legal writing by looking beyond its traditional codified form. Drawing on methodologies ranging from traditional philology to legal and literary theory, and from a diverse selection of contributors offering a broad spectrum of disciplines, specialities and perspectives, the essays examine the intersection between traditional juridical texts - from law codes and charters to treatises and religious regulation - and a wide range of literary genres, including hagiography and heroic poetry. In doing so, they demonstrate that the boundary that has traditionally separated "law" from other modes of thought and writing is far more porous than hitherto realized. Overall, the volume yields valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society.

RGC Awards $5.96 Million in Research Funding to HKU Law 2021/22

Congratulations to our 9 colleagues who were successful in the 2021-2022 round of research grant funding by Hong Kong's Research Grants Council (RGC). Eight General Research Fund (GRF) projects were funded to study the development of investor dispute prevention mechanisms in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, the concept of “best interests” for the purpose of decision-making on behalf of individuals lacking mental capacity in Chinese jurisdictions, the role of peace movements in the 1899 creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the proliferation of International Commercial Courts across the globe, modern legal education reforms undertaken by three East Asian countries—Japan, Korea and China—meant to improve their legal professions by emphasizing postgraduate legal education, neighborhood governance in urban China, the emerging phenomenon of self-governance in the digital economy in China, and a medieval legal bestseller, the 'Statuta Vetera' Manuscript, c. 1280-1520.  An Early Career Scheme (ECS) project was funded to study the receptivity of socialist legal systems to the common law notion of precedent. 

    The details of the new funded projects are as follows:

GRF:

Professor Shahla Ali 

Is an Ounce of Prevention Worth a Pound of Cure? Assessing the Development of Dispute Prevention Mechanisms along the Belt and Road, HK$780,059

Ms Daisy Cheung

Deciding what is best for you: Best interest determinations on behalf of persons without capacity in the Chinese context, HK$443,426

Dr James Fry

The Role of Peace Movements in the 1899 Creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, HK$291,904

Dr Weixia Gu

The Global Rise of the International Commercial Courts: Power Dynamics and Transnational Legal Order, HK644,385

Dr Jed Kroncke

The Modern Re-Engineering of East Asian Lawyers, HK$540,881

Professor Shitong Qiao

The Authoritarian Commons: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms in China's Urban Residential Neighborhoods, HK$1,255,474

Dr Angela Zhang

Decentralizing Platform Governance: Innovations from China, HK$656,825

Dr Anya Adair (cross appointed with Faculty of Arts)

The 'Statuta Vetera' Manuscript, c. 1280-1520: Production and Use of a Medieval Legal Bestseller, HK$599,209

ECS:

Dr Ben Chen, 

The Socialist Reception of Precedent: A Computational Analysis of Guiding Cases in the People’s Republic of China, HK$746,320

HKU Law Teachers Recognised by Teaching Excellence Awards 2020

Three HKU Law teachers were recognised in the 2020 HKU Teaching Excellence Awards for individual and group efforts.  Congratulations to the following colleagues:

• Ms Lindsay Ernst won the Outstanding Teaching Team Award (OTA) with  Mr David L Bishop of the Faculty of Business and Economics for EmpowerU: A cross-disciplinary, community-led, impact-based teaching and learning platform.  The initiative aims to connect domestic workers with opportunities to learn from top education partners, including NGOs, companies, and top university professors. Currently, Lindsay is a Co-Director of the LLM  in Human Rights Programme and Lecturer in Human Rights Experiential Learning. Lindsay specialises in developing interdisciplinary experiential learning opportunities focused on advancing social justice and human rights. Her areas of interest are community legal education and empowerment, migration, children’s rights, disability rights, and clinical legal education.

• Dr Anya M Adair, co-appointed in the School of English, Faculty of Arts, and Department of Law, Faculty of Law, won the Early Career Teaching Award (ECTA). Anya is Assistant Professor in Law and Humanities. Anya’s research centres on medieval English law and legal culture, as well as pre-modern English literature. Her focus is the early medieval period (c.550-1200), but her research extends also to Old Norse and Anglo-Latin, medieval language interaction, book history and manuscript studies, poetry and poetics, digital humanities, and the history of the English language. Her present research seeks to unite more closely the fields of medieval law and medieval literature, and to provide insight into the intellectual, emotional and social dimensions of legal and literary production across the period. Her interest in legal and literary culture takes her work into the history of emotion, historical linguistics, religious writing, poetry, poetics and rhetoric, as well as palaeography, codicology, and the history of law.  Currently, the two courses she is teaching are Introduction to Law and Literary Studies, and The Beginnings of English Law and Literature.

• Professor Douglas W Arner won the Teaching Innovation Team Award (TIA).  Douglas collaborated with  Mr David Bishop of the Faculty of Business and Economics, Mr David S Lee of Faculty of Business and Economics, Ms. Ellen Seto of Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative and Professor Siu-ming Yiu of the Faculty of Engineering to develop HKU edX Professional Certificate Programme in FinTech. This program is designed for those working in finance, technology, regulation or FinTech, those studying related subjects, or those just interested in learning more about one of the most exciting processes underway today. Each course brings together leading experts in FinTech from a range of backgrounds, including professors, market professionals and entrepreneurs. Designed by leading academics from a range of disciplines with input from industry leaders including among others SuperCharger, the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship, Microsoft, PwC and the Asia Capital Markets Institute, each course provides the tools necessary to transform one’s own future in FinTech. Remarkably, this programme is now nominated for the 2020 edX Prize.

The Teaching Excellence Awards Scheme (TEAS) aims to recognise, reward and promote excellence in teaching at the University. Under the Scheme, there are four categories of awards, i.e. University Distinguished Teaching Award, Outstanding Teaching Award (OTA), Early Career Teaching Award (ECTA) and Teaching Innovation Award (TIA). Besides individual awards, both OTA and TIA comprise team awards to recognise and encourage collaborative effort and achievement in enhancing teaching and learning.  We are pleased to see Faculty of Law colleagues obtaining awards in three of these categories this year. Click here to view the list of 2020 TEAS Winners.

HKU Law Teachers Recognised by Teaching Excellence Awards 2019

Six HKU Law teachers were recognised in the 2019 HKU Teaching Excellence Awards for individual and group efforts.  

    Congratulations to the following colleagues:

• Ms Alice Lee who won the University Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award. Alice has been teaching and researching copyright law for more than 20 years. She has obtained nine Teaching Development Grants and one KE grant, and received three university-level teaching awards including the University Distinguished Teaching Award 2019. She promotes and facilitates Teaching & Learning initiatives as Associate Dean (Academic Affairs) of the Law Faculty, as Chair of the University Teaching Exchange Fellowship Scheme, and as a Senior Fellow and an accredited mentor of the UK Higher Education Academy. Her most recent work is the project on 'the Copyright Classroom'. The copyright education videos, tailor-made for the tertiary, secondary and primary education sectors, are disseminated through https://hku.to/Copyright_Classroom “The Copyright Classroom – HKU” channel as well as Ms Lee’s education website www.law.hku.hk/collab.

• Ms. Julienne Jen who won the individual Outstanding Teaching Award. Julienne received the Faculty’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2015 and is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Julienne is interested in exploring different methods of experiential learning in her teaching and she now practises as a solicitor, offering pro bono legal advice at the University’s Clinical Legal Education course. She has co-authored various articles and spoken in conferences concerning professional legal education and experiential learning. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Hong Kong Lawyer magazine. In addition, she contributes regularly to the LexisNexis Practical Guidance series and the Current Service of the Halsbury’s Laws of Hong Kong.

• Team award: Professor Janny H.C. Leung (Leader) of the Faculty of Arts, Dr Marco Wan of the Faculty of Law, Dr Daniel Matthews of the Faculty of Law and Dr Anya Adair of the Faculties of Arts and Law for BA & LLB Programme Curriculum. This joint programme in Arts and Law offers an exciting double degree combining the critical and communication skills offered by a world-leading literary studies programme with comprehensive training in the law. This selective programme uniquely allows students to gain two degrees in a single five-year course of study: a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws.

• Ms. Daisy Cheung who won the Early Career Teaching Award. Daisy is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Medical Ethics & Law and currently co-teaches Medico-Legal Issues for the LLB and JD/LLM programs, as well as tort and contract law.

The Teaching Excellence Awards Scheme (TEAS) aims to recognise, reward and promote excellence in teaching at the University. Under the Scheme, there are four categories of awards, viz. University Distinguished Teaching Award, Outstanding Teaching Award (OTA), Early Career Teaching Award (ECTA) and Teaching Innovation Award (TIA). Besides individual awards, both OTA and TIA comprise team awards to recognise and encourage collaborative effort and achievement in enhancing teaching and learning. All Faculties are encouraged to nominate colleagues who have made outstanding teaching and learning contributions for these awards. For ECTA, in particular, we hope to receive at least one nomination from each Faculty. Click here to view the list of 2019 TEAS Winners.

HKU Law Welcomes Two New Colleagues: Frank He Xin (Chinese Law) and Anya Adair (Law & Literature)

The Faculty of Law warmly welcomes Professor He Xin (Frank), who joins us from City University of Hong Kong, and Assistant Professor Dr Anya Adair, who joins us from Sydney University.  They further strengthen respectively our leading research areas of Chinese law and law & literature.

Prof He Xin (Frank)

     Professor Frank He's research interests are law and society, empirical legal studies, comparative laws, and Chinese legal systems, especially on judicial reforms in China and Chinese family laws.  He obtained his LLB and LLM from Peking University, China, and his JSM and JSD degrees from Stanford University, where he was an Asia-Pacific Scholar. Before joining HKU, he was Professor and Director of the Chinese and Comparative Law Center at School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He has also taught at the law schools of NYU and University of Illinois as Visiting Professor.  His recent works appear in the American Journal of Sociology, Law & Society Review, China Quarterly, China Journal, and American Journal of Comparative Law. His monograph Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision Making in China with Kwai Ng was recently published by Cambridge University Press.

Dr Anya Adair

    Dr Anya Adair is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Law (Faculty of Law) and School of English (Faculty of Arts) in the University of Hong Kong.  Her research interests include medieval English literature, as well as pre-modern English law and legal culture.  She is currently teaching LALS2001 "Introduction to Law and Literary Studies" this semester. The historical scope of Dr Anya Adair’s present research covers the seventh to the sixteenth centuries. It aims to unite more closely the fields of medieval law and medieval literature, and to provide insight into the intellectual, emotional and social dimensions of legal and literary production across the period. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne and graduate degrees in English from Melbourne, Oxford and Yale.  Dr Adair's joint appointment, a first of its kind at HKU, will enhance our law and literary studies double degree programme (BA & LLB) and further HKU's interdisciplinary research in this field.