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 Awarded Four KE Impact Project Awards 2018/19

The University of Hong Kong's Knowledge Exchange (KE) Funding Scheme for Impact Projects supports projects that have the potential to create social, economic, environmental or cultural impacts for industry, business or the community by building on expertise or knowledge in the University and projects designed to collect evidence for corroboration and evaluation of impacts. Engagement projects that aim to benefit non-academic communities beyond Hong Kong are strongly encouraged. 

    The Faculty of Law was successful in obtaining four awards in the 2018/19 round of funding, each in the amount of or less than HK$100,000. Congratulations to Kelley Loper, who obtained three awards, and Lindsay Ernst. The details of their projects are described below:

Ms Kelley Loper
"Evaluation of the Impact of Research on the rights of LGBTIQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer) people in Hong Kong"
The proposed project aims to evaluate and strengthen the impact of research on the rights of LGBTIQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer) people in Hong Kong produced by members of the Faculty of Law, including scholars affiliated with CCPL. It will identify the impact on relevant policy and law reform debates, strategic litigation in Hong Kong, including advocacy by civil society, and also explore ways to enhance ongoing impact by collecting feedback from and identifying resource gaps with various stakeholders.

Ms Kelley Loper
"Development of the Disability Rights Resource Network (DRRN) Website"
The proposed project aims to strengthen dissemination of research output and legal and advocacy resources relating to disability rights, especially the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), to the wider community in general and disability rights advocates in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in particular. It will translate existing materials on the current Disability Rights Resource Network (DRRN) website from English to simplified and traditional Chinese and incorporate new materials based on a survey of the needs of advocates in these three jurisdictions.

Ms Kelley Loper
"Human Rights Hub Website"
The Human Rights Hub website project will identify, compile, and disseminate information on human rights related research, knowledge exchange, and teaching and learning, including human rights experiential learning, in the Faculty of Law, eventually also incorporating work by scholars from other disciplines at the University of Hong Kong. It aims to highlight the Faculty’s and University’s significant strengths in the human rights field, make this work more accessible to non-academic communities, and thus encourage collaboration and enhance local, regional and global impact.

Ms Lindsay Ernst
"Establishment of Migrant Worker Education Platform"
Utilizing the vast knowledge and resources of HKU’s faculty and students, this cross-disciplinary KE project will collaborate with our partners to establish a migrant worker education platform and provide courses (and possibly even certifications) for migrant workers covering topics relating to law, finance, business, technology, communication, health and safety, and other important areas. The impact will directly benefit the general public as migrant workers support many of HK’s families, and having a more professional migrant worker population could have general benefits to nearly everyone in society.

Special Needs Children Awaiting Adoption in Hong Kong (HKFP)

"More must be done for 'hard to place' children awaiting adoption in Hong Kong"

Human Rights in Practice
Hong Kong Free Press
11 November 2015

November 9 has been designated as World Adoption Day. The event, which is only two years old and has yet to be recognised by the UN, aims to raise awareness about adoption and to celebrate adoption worldwide.

      Adoption is more common in Hong Kong than many people may realise. According to statistics from the Social Welfare Department, at the end of June of this year the department was handling over 200 adoption applications. In 2015 alone, over 60 children were matched with families.

     However, despite the large numbers of children who are successfully adopted, there remains a sizeable number of children in Hong Kong who are still in search of permanent loving families to care for them. The majority of waiting children are those considered “hard to place,” including children with special needs, older children, or children who are part of a sibling group.

     As of June of this year, around 80 children were still waiting to be adopted, and 50 of these were children with special needs. A group of law students at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has received a unique opportunity to work on real life legal issues affecting local children.

     These students are working closely with the local partner organization, Mother’s Choice, a non-profit organization that provides support for young girls facing crisis pregnancy and care for children in need of a permanent home. The work has given them an eye-opening experience into this often hidden side of Hong Kong. Through their ‘Human Rights in Practice’ course, the students are assisting the NGO by undertaking research into the laws and issues around adoption, foster care, and children in need of care, not only in Hong Kong, but also internationally.

     There is growing awareness around the issue of special needs children in Hong Kong, but the problem is still one that needs to be addressed. One of the HKU law students participating in the class, Rebecca Morrison, reported being surprised by this trend and the difficulties faced by children with special needs. “More awareness is needed to reduce prejudice and promote acceptance of the need to find a stable home in Hong Kong for all children, regardless of their age or disability,” Morrison said.

     This trend is also true worldwide; an older child or one with special needs may struggle the most to find willing adoptive parents. As a result, these children often grow up in institutions or foster care.

     Growing up in institutional care has serious consequences for children’s development. Studies have shown that children who grow up in institutions rather than a loving home environment are more likely to suffer from poor physical development and lifelong physical, social, and psychological problems. The harm caused by institutional care inevitably falls not only on these children, but on society as a whole. Children who grow up in institutional care are statistically more likely to enter the criminal justice system or rely on social welfare services later in life.

     Through the course, the law students have been given the opportunity to delve into these complex issues and to conduct in-depth research on the laws protecting children in Hong Kong. “There is some good law already on the books, but more can be done to strengthen the adoption system and legal protections for children. Hopefully, after the course and working with Mother’s Choice, we’ll become stronger advocates for Hong Kong’s children, use our legal knowledge to support local families, and inspire others to do the same,” the students said.

     Human Rights in Practice is an experiential learning-based course at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law taught by Part-time Lecturer Lindsay Ernst, with the assistance of legal fellows Jennifer Cheung and Stephanie Persson. 

CCPL's Myanmar Rule of Law Workshop (1-5 Dec 14)

The Centre for Comparative and Public Law held a week-long Myanmar Rule of Law Workshop from 1 to 5 December 2014 at the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong.  The workshop was co-sponsored by The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and was the third rule of law collaboration with CCPL in recent years.  The main CCPL organisers were Farzana Aslam, Kelley Loper and Lindsay Ernst. 

Prof Ian Holliday

The participants were a small group of young professionals working on rebuilding the rule of law in Myanmar.  The five-day intensive workshop consisted of seminars and lectures given by legal academics, lawyers and judges, together with site visits to important rule of law institutions, including the offices of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Equal Opportunities Commission.  

Panel on Independence of the Judiciary

Highlights from the workshop included a public lecture on the rule of law and development by Mr. Robert Pe, a panel on independence of the judiciary featuring Judge Frank Stock NPJ, Justice Queeny Au-yeung and former Justice Anselmo Reyes, a public lecture on the political context of rule of law by Mr. Frank Januzzi, and a public seminar by Professor Ian Holliday.