Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Pangyue Cheng!

Welcome to Dr Pangyue Cheng who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr. Pangyue Cheng is a legal scholar focusing on corporate law, financial regulation, and AI governance. Her research interests encompass institutional stewardship, corporate governance, sustainability, and AI regulation. Pangyue’s work explores the legal challenges companies face in a rapidly changing global environment, particularly how shifts in investor roles, technological advancements, and increasing sustainability demands shape corporate governance and regulatory practices. Her research has been published in international law reviews and peer-reviewed journals such as the Columbia Business Law Review and the European Business Law Review.

Currently, Pangyue’s research focuses on the intersection of corporate governance, sustainability, and technological innovation. She examines how institutional investors foster corporate responsibility and long-term value creation through ESG integration. Additionally, her research on AI governance addresses the opportunities and legal challenges that emerging technologies pose to corporate systems and governance frameworks.

Pangyue holds a Bachelor of Laws from Beijing Normal University, an LLM in Corporate and Financial Services Law, and a PhD from the National University of Singapore, where she researched institutional stewardship in Chinese listed companies. Her work on ESG integration and corporate sustainability was fully funded by the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She has been invited to share her research at esteemed institutions, including Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law, the Society of Legal Scholars, and the American Society of Comparative Law.

Pangyue currently teaches China Company Law and Securities Regulation at the HKU Faculty of Law. She was a Fox International Fellow at Yale University and worked as a researcher on several projects at the National University of Singapore Law School. Before entering academia, she practiced law in mainland China and served as legal counsel for a listed AI company.

Jiahui Duan on Sexual Harassment in Irregular Chinese Workplaces: Business Dinners, Team-Building Activities, and Social Media (Law & Social Inquiry)

"Sexual Harassment in Irregular Chinese Workplaces: Business Dinners, Team-Building Activities, and Social Media"
Jiahui Duan
Law & Social Inquiry
First View , pp. 1 - 32
Published online: October 2023

Abstract: Much of the social and economic inequality that sexual harassment perpetuates is created in the workplace. But research has not always acknowledged the fluid and changing nature of workspaces. This article argues that irregular workspaces and activities—bars and other social drinking sites at which yingchou (business drinking activities) take place, team building, and the WeChat social media platform—are significant sites of sexual harassment in China. These irregular workplaces play a significant role in working life in China, and their informality has made them prone to sexual harassment in the context of deeply entrenched gender norms and vertical power hierarchy.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Jiahui Duan!

Welcome to Dr Jiahui Duan who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr Jiahui Duan is an interdisciplinary legal researcher with an interest in feminist jurisprudence, legal consciousness, labor rights, power, and resistance. She has previously researched the land rights of rural Chinese married-out women. The current research she conducts focuses on workplace sexual harassment issues in China, with the aim of understanding the development of workplace sexual harassment issues in Chinese society, as well as exploring potential anti-sexual harassment strategies within an emerging economic and political context such as China’s. A common intellectual thread of her work is: examining how individuals’ legal consciousness is formed, reshaped, or even disintegrated in their interactions with other socio-legal actors, and investigating the dynamics of legal rules, social norms, and human agency, as well as the Internet and other technologies.

    Dr Duan received her J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a Lloyd M. Robbins Fellow and a BELS Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was a certified lawyer in mainland China.    

      Research Areas:

• Law and society
• Gender and Law
• Employment Law

Congratulations to Dr Cynthia Farid on being awarded a Global Young Academy (GYA) membership

Congratulations to Dr Cynthia Farid (Global Academic Fellow) who has been admitted as a Global Young Academy (GYA) member representing Bangladesh for a five-years term!

  Under the leadership of Menattallah Elserafy (Zewail City of Science and Technology, Egypt) the 53-member Selection Committee of the Global Young Academy (GYA) finalised the selection of 41 new members to join the GYA in June 2023 for a tenure of five years. The GYA’s new member cohort includes representatives from 31 individual countries, covering all GYA general disciplines, and includes 16 females, 1 non-binary and 24 males. In June 2023 when the new cohort is inducted, the gender ratio will be 104 female/93 male/2 non-binary/1 no information given. Such gender balance is a development that the GYA has been moving towards for the last few years and is a reflection of the excellent female/non-binary applicants to the GYA. Among other activities, the GYA acts as a facilitator and convenor for the growing global network of National Young Academies (NYAs). The GYA is therefore delighted to see that a number of new members are also members of – or in leadership positions in – their respective country’s NYA.

      By this opportunity, Dr Cynthia Farid perceives that being part of GYA will be a great network for interdisciplinary research, which could help connect to a lot of global opportunities.  This will give her an edge in global outlook of her legal research career. Dr Farid's research interests include Constitutional Law, Legal History, Law and Society, Human Rights, Law and Development.  To view her profile on the Global Young Academy (GYA) webpage, click here. 

HKU Law Welcomes Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Shenghua Lu

HKU Law welcomes interdisciplinary postdoctoral fellow Dr Shenghua Lu! Dr Lu is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in the judicial politics, political economy, and urban studies. His work has appeared in a number of leading journals that specialize in urban studies and political science and in China studies, including Governance, China Quarterly, Urban Studies, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Land Use Policy, Asian Survey. He co-authored a book chapter in the The Palgrave Handbook of Local Governance in Contemporary China. He also writes in Chinese and publishes in top-tier journals in China. Shenghua received the B.A. (2017) and the Ph.D. (2022) from the School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of Economics, National Tsinghua University (2017) and the Department of Political Science, Yale University (2021-2022).

Welcome to Dr Menglu Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow

Welcome to Dr Menglu Wang who joined HKU Faculty of Law to be the postdoctoral fellow, under the RGC Senior Research Fellow Scheme (SRFS) project “Digital Finance, Financial Inclusion and Sustainability: Building Better Financial Systems”.

    Dr Menglu Wang is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Law, the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include the development and regulation of financial technology (Fintech), with a particular focus on comparative law and Chinese issues. During the postdoctoral period, Menglu will conduct in-depth research on supervisory and regulatory issues relating to digital finance and sustainable development in major Fintech jurisdictions.

     Menglu received her Doctor of Philosophy in Laws from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and participated in several research projects during her PhD. She holds a master’s degree (with distinction) from the University of Sydney Business School, specializing in finance and business law. Menglu passed the national judicial examination in China and obtained the legal professional qualification certificate.  Her research areas include:

• Commercial Corporate and Financial Law
• Comparative Chinese Law
• Information Technology

Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood on Tokenised Funding and Initial Litigation Offerings: the New Kids Putting Third-party Funding on the Block (Law and Financial Markets Review)

"Tokenised funding and initial litigation offerings: the new kids putting third-party funding on the block"

Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood

Law and Financial Markets Review 
Published in December 2022 online

pp.1-23
https://doi.org/10.1080/17521440.2022.2153609

Abstract: This article presents a critical assessment of how blockchain technology is disrupting the monetisation of litigation claims through tokenization – and consequently further shaking up a revolutionary area in litigation financing. The significance in litigation financing is chiefly because tokenization presents securities to the general public in a far more accessible way than was previously the case – and even might enable non-accredited investors to participate in certain litigation financing investments for the first time (or with reduced barriers to entry). The assessment also considers the implications of a litigation pool that was already growing towards USD 20 billion, potentially now getting even larger. We further consider the regulatory challenges and the new moral hazards created in this fast-moving space.

Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood on Taxing the Future: Digital Stateless Income, Business Organisation, and the Search for a New Regulatory Paradigm (Singapore Journal of Legal Studies)

"Taxing the Future: Digital Stateless Income, Business Organisation, and the Search for a New Regulatory Paradigm"

Julien Chaisse & Jamieson Kirkwood

Singapore Journal of Legal Studies

Published in September 2022 

pp. 267-289

Abstract: At a time when “stateless income” is the main tax imperative, this article analyses the challenges of internationalising taxation of multinational enterprises in the digital economy and traversing the normative solutions provided so far (and still to be provided) by both coordinated and unilateral rules and policies. In such a way, this article is therefore firmly entrenched at an important intersection of comparative and business law. Considering that the main problem for tax authorities might be that they have remained national—and landlocked—whereas multinational enterprises operate globally—and virtually, this article also brings into the analysis the connected issues of free trade, globalization, and State sovereignty. The article demonstrates the necessity for international and multilateral solutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project’s “Two-Pillar” solution and explains how this solution can be supplemented by other multilateral reforms.

HKU Law Welcomes Dr Xiaowei Yu, LTC Post-Doctoral Fellow

Welcome to Dr Xiaowei Yu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, who joined the Law and Technology Centre in the Department of Law, the University of Hong Kong. Her research concentrates on the intersection of privacy laws and legal philosophy. Her scholarship includes examining the identifiability problem in transnational privacy regulations, exploring normative approaches to define the material scope of functional privacy regimes, and applying contract theories to address the failure of informed consent in privacy policies.  

     Xiaowei earned her Doctor of the Science of Law (JSD) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law (UofI). Prior to her JSD, Xiaowei completed her LLM at the UofI. Xiaowei also received her master’s degree of jurisprudence and LLB from China University of Political Science and Law. During her time in Illinois, she served as the JSD chair (2017-2019) and a member of The Elder Law Journal (2017-2018). She participated in the US v. Christensen capital murder trial and acted as a liaison for the victim’s family (2019). Xiaowei is admitted to the national bar in China.

Minsung Kim on Governance of Genetic Scissors CRISPR-Cas9 for Research on Embryos and Researchers' Responsibility (Korean Society of Law and Medicine)

"A Study on How Governance of Genetic Scissors CRISPR-Cas9 for Research on Embryos Can Encourage a Researcher to Have a Sense of Responsibility: Focus on the Bioethics and Safety Act Article 47"
Minsung Kim
The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
2022

Abstract: CRISPR-Cas9 is one of the gene-editing technologies that infinite potential. It may provide human beings with many benefits or cause unanticipated challenges. The governance as standards setting or regulation of gene-editing technologies can contribute to keeping a balance between scientific value and ethical commitments. Guaranteeing public participation provides an additional opportunity to think about ethical and moral considerations: For whose benefit the internationally discussed governance of gene-editing technologies is directed at? There is a doubt regarding whether the governance justifies scientific researchers’ gene-editing research. Suppose that governance promotes the advancement of CRISPR-Cas9, it should also encourage greater research responsibility. If not, there may be tragedies brought about by the misconduct of researchers. Thus, the essential matter on the governance for the research of CRISPR-Cas9 is the researchers’ responsibility. 

Life as a Global Academic Fellow with HKU Law (Interview with Dr Anna Dziedzic)

Anna Dziedzic joined HKU Law as a Global Academic Fellow in 2019. She researches in the field of comparative constitutional law, with a particular focus on constitutional change and the role of judges and judiciaries. She used the Global Academic Fellowship to undertake broader comparative research into foreign judges and the significance of nationality to judicial office.  Her book, Foreign Judges in the Pacific, will be published by Hart Publishing in November 2021.  

1.    When were you a Global Academic Fellow with HKU Law?

I was a Global Academic Fellow in Hong Kong from August 2019 to August 2021. This time encompassed both the Hong Kong protests and the pandemic, but despite these challenges the Fellowship was a dynamic and rewarding experience.

2.   What was the topic of your PhD thesis? Were you able to extend or develop your PhD research during your time as a Global Academic Fellow?

I completed my PhD thesis at Melbourne Law School in 2019, on the topic of foreign judges on courts of constitutional jurisdiction in Pacific island states. The Global Academic Fellowship at HKU Law provided me with the opportunity and the support to develop my research on foreign judges beyond the Pacific to consider the more than 50 jurisdictions which use foreign judges, in some way, on their domestic courts.

     One reason I was attracted to post-doctoral research at HKU was that Hong Kong has its own experience of using foreign judges on its Court of Final Appeal, a point of similarity that connected with my research on Pacific island judiciaries. I was able to test some of the theoretical insights that emerged from my study of foreign judges in the Pacific by applying them to the different context of Hong Kong, especially as the position of foreign judges came under pressure after the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020.

     In addition, with funding from the HKU Law Faculty and support from HKU’s Centre for Comparative and Public Law, I and Professor Simon Young led a comparative project on foreign judges on domestic courts. This included an international workshop in May 2021, during which 36 judges, scholars and practitioners came together to discuss the use of foreign judges in over 30 jurisdictions across the world, and a joint keynote presentation from Justice Joseph Fok PJ and Justice William Gummow NPJ of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. The papers presented at the workshop will be published in The Cambridge Handbook of Foreign Judges on Domestic Courts, co-edited by Professor Young and I.

L-R: Dean Fu, Justice Fok, Prof Young, Dr Dziedzic

    The Global Academic Fellowship also provided me with the time and space to revise and extend my PhD thesis for publication as a monograph titled Foreign Judges in the Pacific.

3.    What other opportunities did you take up during your fellowship?

Living and working in Hong Kong also opened up new areas of comparative study for me. In response to issues raised by the protest movement of 2019, Julius Yam and I prepared a CCPL Policy Paper on the potential use of amnesties in contexts of civil unrest. This work inspired a scholarly paper comparing amnesties for street protesters across the world and examining the normative justifications for amnesties in the distinctive context of street protest.

     While a Global Academic Fellow, I was invited to be Associate Director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law. This role provided many opportunities to collaborate with comparative constitutional law academics and research centres around the world and to organise and participate in seminars and conferences, both in person and online.

4.    How did you like living in Hong Kong and being part of the HKU Law community?

The HKU Law community is very welcoming and supportive. It is also a diverse community and in addition to connecting with scholars in my field of public law, I learned a lot from scholars of law and literature, legal theory, and empirical legal studies, to name a few.

     One aspect of the community that I particularly enjoyed was convening the Junior Scholars Forum. Together with Chris Szabla (another Global Academic Fellow) we sought to create a space for post-doctoral and post-graduate researchers from the three law schools in Hong Kong to meet and share their work in a supportive and collegial way. It was a valuable way to build connections with researchers from other Hong Kong universities working in very different areas of law.

5.    How did the Global Academic Fellowship prepare you for the next stage of your academic career?

The Global Academic Fellowship is a great stepping stone to further research as well as a tenured academic career. I was able to extend my research agenda, strengthen my publication record, and develop networks of scholars and practitioners in Hong Kong and beyond. There were also opportunities to teach, participate in events, and engage with student associations and the wider legal community, all experiences that open many doors for future work.

6.    What advice would you have for someone thinking of applying for the fellowship?

Do it! The Global Academic Fellowship is a rare post-doc: two years with the freedom to choose what you are going to research and write about. With time, funding and a supportive Faculty, you can continue to follow research pathways from your PhD thesis or begin something completely new.

HKU Law Welcomes AIIFL Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Kuzi Charamba

Dr Kuzi Charamba joined as Post-Doctoral Fellow in FinTech, RegTech, Sustainability, and Sustainable Development, based in the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL) in February 2021. Kuzi did his PhD / DCL and LLM at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and his LLB at Kings College London. He has taught a number of courses at McGill during his PhD / DCL studies, including winning McGill’s Teaching Tomorrow’s Professor Award. 

 He also has extensive research experience, in particular with the One Earth Future Foundation in Denver, Colorado, USA, as a Visiting Scholar in Residence at the University of Colorado Law School, and research assistant to several leading professors at McGill. He has delivered papers and presentations in Thailand, Canada, the USA, the Dominican Republic, Spain and the Netherlands.

His first book Hired Guns and Human Rights had been published.

HKU Law Welcomes Two New Post-Docs (Dr Evan Rosevear and Dr Hui Chen)

HKU Law warmly welcomes two new postdoctoral legal scholars who, respectively, will explore questions of comparative law and politics with a focus on national constitutions, and legal developments in the Greater Bay Area.   

     Dr Evan Rosevear is a Global Academic Fellow who joins us from Canada.  His research lies at the intersection of comparative law and comparative politics with a focus on national constitutions and domestic legal systems. It is guided by a desire to understand how courts, rights, and constitutions operate, how they interact with other state and non-state actors, and whether and when they are capable of fostering social and political change. Methodologically, it takes the form of theoretically-informed, empirically-driven comparative analysis that involves single case and small-n research supplemented by large-n statistical analysis.

     His current projects include a comparative examination of the interaction of legal reasoning and politics in the adjudication of constitutionalized social rights and the use of executive discretion in instances of executive aggrandizement. He is also interested in developing the empirical and comparative study of non-US judges and courts.

      Evan holds a PhD in political science and a JD from the University of Toronto. He has been a Research Associate with the Toronto Initiative for Economic and Social Rights (TIESR) and previously spent time at the Center for Justice and Society at FGV Direito-Rio and the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public and International Law (SAIFAC) at the University of Johannesburg.

Dr Hui Chen is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Law. His research centres on WTO law, international trade negotiation, dispute settlement, and legal harmonization in the Greater Bay Area.

     Prior to joining HKU, Hui had the experience of working and researching in the WTO headquarters in Geneva, during which he worked in the Accessions Division to support the application of membership for Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Algerian, and Yemen. Having obtained the Chinese Legal Professional Qualification Certificate, he has practiced law in Shanghai.

     Hui has been participating in research projects on China’s global governance, dispute settlement and legal harmonization in the Greater Bay Area, including but not limited to exploring the path of Hong Kong becoming a centre of international dispute resolution, the establishment of an International Commercial Arbitration Centre in the Greater Bay Area, and the facilitation for liberalizing the legal services markets between the Mainland and Hong Kong. He co-authored a book chapter titled “The Belt and Road Initiative in China’s Approach to Global Governance: Implications for China-EU Relations and Economic Cooperation” in the book European Union and China’s Belt and Road: Impact, Engagement and Competition, which will be published in Routledge in 2021. His present research focuses on the legal convergence and harmonization across different legal regions in the Greater Bay Area.

Call for Applications: HKU Law Global Academic Fellows 2021-2022 (Deadline: 1 January 2021)

THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

Global Academic and Presidential Fellows

Department of Law

Applications are invited for three appointments as Global Academic Fellow in the Department of Law, to commence in August 2021 or January 2022, for a period of two years.

The Global Academic Fellows Programme was created to provide outstanding and aspiring legal academics with time and resources to transition into the global teaching market. Fellows will have access to an internationally leading faculty for mentorship, affiliation with related research centers, and funding for attending academic conferences to present their work. Other opportunities will include teaching appointees’ own course or gaining experience in core courses, and organizing funded academic conferences in their field. Applicants should have completed their doctoral degrees (JD or PhD) before the start of their appointments, unless they possess significant practice experience.

One to three fellows will be appointed each year, and will be expected to be in residence at HKU and devote their time primarily to their own research and preparation for entering the international teaching market. Fellows will be provided shared office space and administrative support when needed. Information about the Department of Law and the Faculty of Law can be found at: www.law.hku.hk.

Global Academic Fellows enjoy a highly competitive salary of 480,000HKD (~60,000USD/52,000EUR) in addition to annual leave, travel funds, relocation expenses and full medical benefits. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income.

Additionally, all shortlisted candidates will be nominated for HKU’s Presidential Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Each of these nominations potentially represents a 25% increase in salary, research funds and the optional extension of the fellowship for a third year. Address any specific questions to the Director at: jkroncke@hku.hk.

The University only accepts online application for the above post. Applicants should apply at https://jobs.hku.hk/cw/en/job/502489/global-academic-fellow-3-posts. Applications require the following 4 components: 1) an updated C.V., 2) a 3-page research agenda (including past, current and future projects), 3) a list of at least three academic references, and 4) a writing sample (under 50 pages).

Closes 1 January 2021.

HKU Law Global Academic Fellows 2020-2021 (Deadline: 1 February 2020)

Applications are invited for appointments as Global Academic Fellow (3 posts) in the Department of Law (Ref.: 499292), to commence in August 2020 or January 2021, for a period of two years.

     The Global Academic Fellows Programme was created to provide outstanding and aspiring legal academics with time and resources to transition into the global teaching market. Fellows will have access to an internationally leading faculty for mentorship and affiliation with related research centers alongside support for attending academic conferences to present their work. Other opportunities will include the option of co-teaching courses and organizing funded academic conferences. Applicants should have completed their doctoral degrees before the start of their appointments, unless they possess significant practice experience. The successful candidate will be appointed at the grade of Post-doctoral Fellow.

     One to three fellows will be appointed each year, and will be expected to be in residence at HKU and devote their time primarily to their own research and preparation for entering the international teaching market in the second year of their fellowship. Fellows will be provided shared office space and administrative support when needed. Information about the Department of Law and the Faculty of Law can be found at: www.law.hku.hk.

     Successful candidates will be nominated for HKU’s Presidential Post-doctoral Fellowship and Hong Kong’s RGC Post-doctoral fellowship Scheme. Each of these nominations potentially represents additional salary, research funds and the optional extension of the fellowship for a third year. Two of three inaugural fellows have already secured tenure-track appointments within their first year of appointment. Specific questions can be addressed to the Director at: jkroncke@hku.hk.

     A highly competitive package including a monthly salary, housing allowance, relocation allowance, medical benefits, annual leave, and conference and research support will be offered to successful applicant as applicable. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income.

     The University only accepts online application for the above post. Applicants should apply online and upload 1) an up-to-date C.V., 2) a 3-page research agenda (including past, current and future projects), 3) a list of at least three academic references, and 4) a writing sample (under 50 pages). Closes February 1, 2020 (extend to February 14, 2020). Click here to submit your online application.

HKU Law Global Academic Fellows 2019-2020 (Deadline: 15 March 2019)

Applications are invited for appointments as Global Academic Fellow (3 posts) in the Department of Law (Ref.: 493956), to commence in August 2019 or January 2020, for a period of two years. 

     The Global Academic Fellows Programme was created to provide outstanding and aspiring legal academics with time and resources to transition into the global teaching market. Fellows will have access to an internationally leading faculty for mentorship and affiliation with related research centers alongside support for attending academic conferences to present their work. Other opportunities will include the option of co-teaching courses and organizing funded academic conferences. Applicants should have completed their doctoral degrees before the start of their appointments, unless they possess significant practice experience. The successful candidate will be appointed at the grade of Post-doctoral Fellow. 

     One to three fellows will be appointed each year, and will be expected to be in residence at HKU and devote their time primarily to their own research and preparation for entering the international teaching market in the second year of their fellowship. Fellows will be provided shared office space and administrative support when needed. Information about the Department of Law and the Faculty of Law can be found at: www.law.hku.hk. Specific questions can be made to the Director at jkroncke@hku.hk. 

   A highly competitive package including a monthly salary, housing allowance, relocation allowance, medical benefits, annual leave, and conference and research support will be offered to successful applicant as applicable. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income. 

     The University only accepts online applications for the above post. Applicants should apply online and upload 1) an up-to-date C.V., 2) a 3-page research agenda (including past, current and future projects), 3) a list of at least three academic references, and 4) a writing sample (under 50 pages). Closes March 15, 2019. Click here to submit your online application.