APS faculty members awarded The EdUHK President’s Awards for Outstanding Performance

The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) announced the result of the President’s Awards for Outstanding Performance 2019/20 on 22 May 2020. Two faculty members of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS) have been conferred with this prestigious awarded in the domains of teaching and research, respectively. This year, a total of 32 nominations, consisting of 10 nominations for the Teaching domain, 11 nominations for the Research domain, 8 nominations for the Knowledge Transfer domain, and 3 nominations for the Administrative Services domain, have been received. All the nominations have gone through stringent selection by respective Selection Panels comprising lay Council Members, colleagues from sister universities, staff and student representatives, as well as past Award Recipients, according to a set of comprehensive assessment criteria. 

Outstanding Performance in Teaching

Dr Isabella NG Fung-Sheung Associate Head of Department of Asian and Policy Studies (Teaching and Learning) Assistant Professor The President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching was established to recognize and reward excellence in teaching by individual academic staff or teams and to emphasize the University’s commitment to fostering teaching innovation and excellence, enhancing students learning, and providing teaching scholarships. Dr Isabella Ng Fung-sheung, Assistant professor of APS has been awarded the Presidents’ Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching. Trained as a feminist anthropologist, she applies her research approach to teaching by engaging students in long-term community, policy and research work. Her research training facilitated her adoption of her 3Cs approach – Collaboration, Co-production and Camaraderie – as a way of combining training in the tangible skills of co-construction and application of knowledge, and the intangible personal attributes of resilience, compassion, passion, love and empathy. Dr Ng’s teaching philosophy is “Teaching without borders”. She has applied this philosophy by 1) leading her students to work on and in the local community and communities far and wide; 2) encouraging students of diverse backgrounds to engage with marginalized communities; and 3) exposing students to real-life learning by participating in real-life policy advocacy and lobbying processes. She and her students have worked with walled villagers, Thai migrants, and asylum-seekers and refugees in Hong Kong, as well as displaced persons in Thailand and Myanmar. She co-founded a non-government organisation (NGO) with asylum-seekers and students in 2014. Through her engagement with the refugee community, she has co-produced and published journal articles and the first Chinese book on asylum-seeker and refugee issues in Hong Kong, in collaboration with her students. She was the first academic to lead a team of students to prepare and present policy submissions in Hong Kong Legislative Council Public Hearings. Within the University, Dr Ng developed the popular Communication Studies in Policy and Governance minor, which promotes integrating communication studies as an integral part of contemporary policy studies and advocacy, a crucial element overlooked in the local higher-education curriculum. In 2013, she obtained a Teaching Development Grant to develop a web portal to engage students in instant forum discussions and reflective learning, and to use media tools and strategies to actively engage in policy and social issues. To live up to her philosophy of “Teaching without borders”, Dr Ng has been training academics in universities in Myanmar and giving talks locally and internationally on refugee issues. She has also worked with the United Nations and international NGOs to combat negative narratives about migrants. She received the 2019 “Good Teacher Award” from Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union for her dedication and commitment to learning and teaching.  

Outstanding Performance in Research (Research Excellence Award) 

Dr Alex HE Jingwei Associate Head of Department of Asian and Policy Studies (Research and Development) Associate Professor The President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research was established to honour research excellence exhibited by individual academic staffs or teams and to recognise, encourage and reward outstanding research of significant benefit to the wider community. Dr Alex HE Jingwei, Associate Professor of APS, has been awarded the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research (Research Excellence Award). Dr He’s main research areas are public policy analysis, health policy and reforms, and comparative social policy. As Principal Investigator, Dr He secured funding from the Early Career Scheme (ECS), the General Research Fund (GRF), the Public Policy Research (PPR) Funding Scheme, and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the past five years. Success in these external grant applications is a good indication of the recognition of Dr He’s significant contribution to social policy research in urban China and Hong Kong, and strong evidence-based policy recommendations. Dr He is prolific researcher, with 23 research outputs in the past three years, including 14 journal articles, four book chapters and one edited book. He was the first author or corresponding author in all these publications. Dr He’s specialisation in social policy and health governance with an East Asian focus has been widely recognized. In July 2019, he was selected as a core member of the research consortium of The Asia-Pacific Observatory (APO) on Health Systems and Policies of the WHO. This achievement not only served as a strong testament to Dr He’s academic excellence, but also increased the exposure of EdUHK in the international health care community. He has demonstrated outstanding research leadership in the broader academic community, serving as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Asian Public Policy and Executive Member of the East Asian Social Policy Network. In addition to his research achievements, Dr He is devoted to the promotion of a research culture in both EdUHK and the broader academic community. He has held key administrative roles in his Department, where he is the Associate Head and Chair of the Departmental Research Committee. Since 2016, he has run an annual public policy summer school series, which attracted hundreds of young scholars and research students from Hong Kong, the Mainland, Taiwan, Macau and overseas. Striving to make impact for the betterment of the society with his research, Dr He enthusiastically participates in policy advocacy. He has contributed to raising public awareness of health-reform options through extensive media engagements in Hong Kong and China.   In view of the current pandemic, the President’s Awards Presentation Ceremony for this year has been postponed and combine it with the one in the next year. Since the launched of the President’s Awards in 2011/12, several members of the APS have been awarded.