Stephanie Biedermann awarded Early Career Teaching Award 2024

Congratulations to Ms. Stephanie Biedermann who was awarded the Early Career Teaching Award under the University of Hong Kong Teaching Excellence Award Scheme (TEAS) 2024.

Stephanie is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, the Programme Director of the Master of Laws in Human Rights, and is a US-licensed lawyer. She specializes in international law, immigration, forced migration, and discrimination issues, particularly for refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrant workers. Her legal experience includes work in the US, the Middle East, and Hong Kong, with a focus on public interest law and access to justice issues as they relate to individual client services, policy decisions, and the development of clinical opportunities for law students. Stephanie teaches across a variety of subject areas at HKU. She is the course coordinator for the Legal Research and Writing programme for LLB students, is Co-Director of the Rule of Law Education project (ROLE), and also teaches courses in human rights and refugee law.

In her time at HKU, Stephanie has emphasized the practical applications of classroom learning, to encourage students to use their creativity, to take initiative to design their own projects, and to excite them about what is possible when they implement what they have learned. Stephanie’s teaching seeks to create opportunities for students to practice and demonstrate a full range of legal skills. She believes that balanced learning requires not only subject matter knowledge, but also practical awareness, understanding the needs of an audience or client, and developing good judgment. She has also incorporated the use of GenAI into to the legal writing curriculum to encourage thoughtful, critical use of this new tool. 

The Teaching Excellence Award 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 (UDTA), Outstanding Teaching Award (OTA), Early Career Teaching Award (ECTA) and Teaching Innovation Award (TIA). 

Click here to view the list of 2024 TEAS Winners.

HKU Law Awarded Five KE Impact Projects 2021/2022

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.

     Five projects are supported under the KE Impact Project Grant Scheme in the 2021/22 with an exceptional outstanding case being awarded with the maximum funding amount of HK$150,000. Congratulations to :

• Ms Amanda Whitfort "Wildlife Crime: Knowledge Transfer for Informed Sentencing in Greater China". This ongoing interdisciplinary project involves a collaboration between Associate Professor Amanda Whitfort, Faculty of Law, Dr Caroline Dingle, School of Biological Sciences and Dr Gary Ades, Head of Fauna, Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden, in producing species victim impact statements, showing the impact of wildlife crime on endangered species. These statements aid the Agricultural Fisheries and Conservation Department, Customs and Excise Department and the Department of Justice (Hong Kong) and Forestry police and prosecutors in the PRC to effectively prosecute wildlife crimes, and assist the judiciary in Hong Kong to deter, through effective sentencing, wildlife offences against Hong Kong legislation.

• Ms Isabella Wenting Liu and Ms Stephanie Biedermann “Understanding Rule of Law for Secondary School Students”. The project aims at enhancing Hong Kong secondary school students’ understanding of the rule of law and its crucial role as the foundation of Hong Kong’s success and institutions. HKU law students will develop teaching plans on different rule of law topics and deliver legal talks at secondary schools. This project provides a platform for HKU students and secondary schools to form connections and develop a forum for discussion on foundational legal concepts. Teaching materials will be made accessible to the wider community through the ROLE website (www.role.hku.hk).

• Ms Darcy Lynn Davison-Roberts “Employment & Labour Claims Knowledge Hub”. In partnership with LITE Lab@HKU, A2J and HKWWA, this project seeks to implement the Hub; a technology-based caselaw databank for use by the primary beneficiary HKWWA. The Hub will provide the means by which HKWWA can collect, collate and analyse labour and employment caselaw and in turn facilitate their mission of promoting and improving women workers’ interests and status in Hong Kong through their advocacy work. Once established, the project intends to make the Hub open-sourced and available to other NGOs. This project aims to achieve greater transparency in the judicial decision-making process and to increase access to justice for grassroots, female workers in respect of their labour and employment law issues in Hong Kong.

• Ms Darcy Lynn Davison-Roberts “Legal Advice Programme for Grassroots Women Workers”. This project aims to address the lack of employment and labour law expertise and legal resources available to the grassroots women workers served by the primary beneficiary, the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association (“HKWWA”). By conducting a needs and capacity assessment, the project will first seek to understand what HKWWA, and its clients identify as their existing and future legal needs and what legal knowledge and resources exist within HKWWA. Following this preliminary analysis, the project will revise and expand upon HKWWA’s existing legal case handling practices and knowledge base and design and implement a bespoke monthly community legal advice programme similar to those utilised by other Hong Kong NGOs.

• Dr Richard Wai Seng Wu “Building Better Lawyers in China and Australia in the Post-Covid-19 Era Through Strengthening Their Capabilities in Innovation, Creativity and Ethics with Experiential Learning”. This interdisciplinary project aims to build better lawyers in China and Australia by strengthening their capabilities in innovation, creativity and ethics in the post-Covid-19 era. Cutting-edge knowledge in these areas will be delivered through webinars to lawyers in these two countries by academics from HKU, UC Berkeley, Melbourne University and Birmingham University, as well as law firm partners, legal counsel and legal technologist who have local experience in China and Australia. This project seeks to create social impact by raising Chinese and Australian lawyers’ awareness of the importance of innovation, creativity and ethics for globalized legal practice in post-Covid-19 era.

Meet the People Behind LITE Lab@HKU (Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship)

Brian W Tang is executive director of LITE Lab@HKU, University of Hong Kong’s new interdisciplinary and experiential programme to foster law, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (LITE) led by the Faculty of Law in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science. Brian is a frequently invited international speaker on his practice and research areas of law and innovation, capital marketplaces, regtech, lawtech, AI governance, virtual assets and future skills. His work was featured on CNBC’s Learning Curve Series and in Diana Wu’s book Future Proof: Reinventing Work In the Age of Acceleration (2019).

     Brian is co-chair of the Fintech Association of Hong Kong’s RegTech Committee, co-founded the APAC Regtech Network, and sits on IEEE’s Global Initiative on Ethics on Autonomous and Intelligent System’s Policy Committee, the HKU Fintech Index Advisory Board and the Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (ALITA)’s Steering Committee. 

     Brian is founder of ACMI and Young Makers & ChangeMakers, and organized Hong Kong’s first legaltech and regtech hackathons in conjunction with Global Legal Hackathon and smart legal contract challenge in conjunction with Computational Law & Blockchain Festival. He has been invited to be a mentor for Bizkathon@HKUST 2019, MIT Entrepreneurship & Fintech Integrator 2019, Ocean Park x HKU Hackathon 2019, iDendron Incubation Programme, Hong Kong Law Society Innotech Law Hackathon and Fintech SuperCharger, and a judge for Barclays DerivHack 2019, WSJ Financial Inclusion Challenge Awards and Microsoft ImagineHack 2017. He was also an instructor for blockchain incubator Helix Accelerator. 

     Brian is an avid proponent of blended learning, being a principal instructor of Asia’s first FinTech MOOC on edX that has more than 40,000 learners in every country worldwide and contributed to HKU’s Blockchain and Fintech MOOC as well as to the Hong Kong Society of Financial Analyst’s Fintech Video Series on capital market and regtech. 

     Brian has spent nearly 20 years at global investment bank Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, and at law firms Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and California and Mallesons in Perth, Australia, where he advised on some of the world’s largest and first-ever financial services and technology capital markets and M&A deals, project bonds and microfinance. With responsibilities at Credit Suisse covering Asia-Pacific (ex-Australia and Japan), Brian has worked on IPOs in nearly every Asian jurisdiction, and some landmark transactions include the dual-listings of China Telecom (NYSE/HKEx), ICBC (HKEx/SSE), UC Rusal (HKEx/Euronext Paris) and Glencore (LSE/HKEx); Alibaba.com’s privatization; and led a cross-disciplinary team to establish and manage one of the first Chinese joint venture investment banks.  Brian is admitted in Hong Kong, the State of New York and Supreme Court of Western Australia and the High Court of Australia. 

As a new lecturer joining the LITE Lab@HKU team, Stephanie Biedermann is creating opportunities for students to gain practical and transactional experience in Hong Kong, research relevant legal issues, and assist local companies and NGOs. A US-licensed lawyer, Stephanie's legal experience includes work in the US, the Middle East, and Hong Kong, with a focus on public interest law and access to justice issues as they relate to individual client services, policy decisions, and the development of clinical opportunities for law students.
     Prior to joining HKU, Stephanie Biedermann served as Legal Officer at PILnet, where she oversaw the Hong Kong Pro Bono Roundtable. While based in the United Arab Emirates, Stephanie Biedermann worked on matters ranging from international energy policies to labour migration in the Gulf Coooperation Council. As an officer in the governance division of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – a sustainability-focused intergovernmental organisation based in Abu Dhabi – she helped initiate collaboration between IRENA and UNHCR to bring renewable energy to refugee camps in Jordan and Ethiopia. While in Abu Dhabi, Stephanie also worked on policies to improve living and working conditions for migrant workers. She was part of the team that revised New York University Abu Dhabi’s labour standards. In Cairo, Stephanie was the Legal Director of an NGO assisting refugees in the resettlement process. She strived to find durable solutions for vulnerable families and individuals – primarily from Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia. 

     While based in the United States, Stephanie conducted impact litigation on behalf of persons with disabilities with Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, California, as the Arthur Liman Fellowship Attorney. Stephanie holds a JD from Yale Law School, a BA in English from Princeton University, and is admitted to the State Bar of California, USA.