Stanford University recently released an updated list representing the top 2% of the most-cited scientists in various disciplines. Among which, four scholars from the Department of Asian and Policy Studies of The Education University of Hong Kong, Chair Prof Stephen Y.L. CHEUNG, Chair Prof CHOU Kee-lee, Prof WOO Chi-keung, Dr He Jingwei Alex are listed in the list of top 2% scientists in Finance, Gerontology, Energy, and Political Science and Public Administration, respectively.
Professor Stephen Y.L. CHEUNG is ranked 174 out of 9,782 scientists in the field of Finance, with a C Score (self-citations excluded, similarly hereinafter) of 3.36 (composite indicator for career-long impact). Highly active in academic research, Prof Stephen Y.L. CHEUNG specializes in corporate finance, investment, and financial market development, and has published widely in international refereed journals. He has been the President of EdUHK since 2016.
Professor CHOU Kee-lee is ranked 17 out of 3,882 scientists in the field of Gerontology, with a C Score of 3.87 (composite indicator for career-long impact). Prof CHOU has published over 170 papers in the areas of geriatric psychiatry, elderly policies, population policy, immigrant policy, poverty, welfare reforms, income inequality, and health policy. He has conducted numerous policy research projects funded by the Research Grant Council (RGC) and the Central Policy Unit (Predecessor of Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office) of The HKSAR government.
Prof WOO Chi-keung is ranked 2,387 out of 321,394 scientists in the field of Energy, with a C Score of 3.22 (composite indicator for career-long impact). Which reflects his widely cited papers on energy economics and applied microeconomics. Prof Woo has won a General Research Fund project, a Teaching Development Grant, a Public Policy Research project, five faculty research prizes, and a gold medal for Online Assessment System for Individual Scores (OASIS) in the International Innovation and Invention Competition (IIIC) Taiwan 2020 and the 2021 Special Edition – Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days.
Dr He Jingwei, Alex is ranked 823 out of 26,717 scientists in the field of Political Science and Public Administration, with a C Score of 2.7 (composite indicator for single-year Impact). Dr He specializes in public policy analysis, health policy and governance, and social policy reforms, with a particular focus on East Asia. Dr He is also the Associate Editor of Policy and Society and Journal of Asian Public Policy.
This recognition places APS on the global map of excellence in various disciplines and brings great pride to the EdUHK. APS looks forward to seeing our faculty members’ research output help contribute to social change.
*The c-score focuses on impact (citations) rather than productivity (number of publications) and it also incorporates information on co-authorship and author positions (single, first, last author). Also. The above c-scores are self-citations excluded.
Learn more: https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/4
This book is a graduation present (at least a belated one) from us, the editors and the department to you.
We all know OUR programme is ending, but it does not mean we must say farewell in tears. This book is our more fun way of recording the growth and progress that we have all been through together. In this book, you will find your stories re-imagined in the different chapters. We follow BA(LSE) as if it was a person on an adventure to the end.
Feel free to go through the book by skipping to the chapter you like. Or you could start from the beginning, where you will experience the memories of the programme from the beginning to the end. We hope you enjoy this memory book!
Congratulations to Associate Professor Lina Vyas and Research Assistant Professor Stuti Rawat for being awarded the Best Paper Award at the European Group for Public Administration Annual Conference in 2021.
The awarded article, entitled “When public administration education switches online: Students perceptions during COVID-19”, co-authored with Dr Yan Yifei (LSE Fellow) and Dr Alfred Wu (Assistant Dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore), has just been published in Teaching Public Administration.
Full Article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01447394221119092
The Department of Asian and Policy Studies is delighted to announce the appointment of The Hon Matthew CHEUNG Kin-chung, GBM, GBS, JP, former Chief Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as Honorary Professor.
Mr. Cheung joined the government as an Information Officer in 1972 after graduating from The University of Hong Kong. He transferred to the Administrative Service in 1979, and rose to Administrative Officer Staff Grade A1 in 2004. Among his earlier postings were Assistant District Officer (Eastern); Assistant Private Secretary to the Governor; Secretary, Industry Development Board; District Officer (North); Assistant Director-General of Trade; and Administrative Assistant to the Financial Secretary.
As a senior directorate officer, he served as Deputy Judiciary Administrator; Deputy Head of Central Policy Unit; Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower; Commissioner for Labour; Director of Education; and Permanent Secretary for Economic Development and Labour.
Mr. Cheung took up the political appointment of Secretary for Labour and Welfare in 2007 and served for almost 10 years until January 2017 when he was appointed Chief Secretary for Administration (CS). He served as CS until June 2021, making him the longest serving senior government official in Hong Kong’s history.
Mr. Cheung joins the Department of Asian and Policy Studies in September 2022 and will deliver lectures in the Master of Public Policy and Management programme and meet with students and faculty.
Dr. Siu-yau Lee, Acting Head of the Department, said “We are honoured to have Mr. Cheung as an honorary professor here in the Department of Asian and Policy Studies. Our students and staff will benefit immensely from his extensive experience. We look forward to working with and learning from him in the years to come.”
In the face of ever-changing social challenges, the demand for public policy and public management talents soars. Many civil servants return to school to learn more about public administration expertise. The Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM) programme at The Education University of Hong Kong provides professional policy analysis and public management training for in-service professionals, policy practitioners, and future public leaders. LO Hiu Fung, elected as a councilor in Hong Kong's Tai Po District in 2016 and has long served in the community, here to share his journey of pursuing excellence in MPPM with us.
Share your experiences of participating in social work
My father served as a District Councilor in 2004. Under his influence, I had the opportunity to contact and participate in social work at an early age. In the volunteer organization “Tai Po Power”, I served as a volunteer secretary and actively organized various types of volunteer services to support underprivileged groups at the grassroots level.
In 2016, I was elected as the youngest councilor in Tai Po District. During my term of office, I distributed work reports and set up street stations frequently, to ensure my work in the District Council was close to the public sentiment in the community. At the same time, I have also advised on several livelihood projects. After my work as a council member, I continued to serve the community and assist the youth as a district advisor of BPA, vice chairman of the Tai Po South Sub-committee, and vice-chairman of the Tai Po Youth Association, and maintained close contact with the public through mass media. .
During the pandemic of COVID-19, I have mobilized volunteers in Tai Po to assist the government in epidemic prevention and anti-epidemic work, including packaging and distributing anti-epidemic materials; assisting in crowd-control measures on testing stations, etc.
Reasons for choosing MPPM to study further?
By immersing myself in community services, I realized that I need to strengthen my scientific and professional public management capabilities to improve the optimization of community management. Therefore, I enrolled in the Master of Public Policy and Management at The Education University of Hong Kong at the end of my term, hoping to learn public management knowledge systematically and better equip myself to serve the community in the future.
The MPPM programme fully meets my requirement. The course is designed to cultivate students’ policy analysis skills and public management professional qualities, forge future public sector leaders, and guide me to learn more professional public management skills in policy science, management, and policy analysis. The experiential learning provided by MPPM attracts me the most: teachers lead students to learn outside the classroom, combining theory with practice to study in significant institutions. I believe that I would benefit greatly from them if I could have the opportunity to get in touch with the senior manager in experiential learning.
How does MPPM help in your work?
Currently, I hold management positions in Youth Center and Community Service, focusing on policy research, community services, and youth work. It was a pity I could not participate in experiential learning when the Covid-19 pandemic was rampant during my studies. However, the MPPM provides a clear and solid academic foundation for policy research, which enables me to analyze its impact and effectiveness more accurately and comprehensively, and put forward feasible suggestions to achieve twice the result with half the effort. I use the solid knowledge framework established in the course to combine with the practical problems encountered at work. And think critically about the pros and cons of each plan so that I can better contribute to the improvement of the community!
Message to prospective students
The curriculum of MPPM can provide you with the best equipment to deal with the problems and challenges of society. However, knowledge must be integrated with practical experience to assure maximum effectiveness. Therefore, I suggest you pay more attention to what is happening in the community, analyzing problems from different angles and perspectives. and polish your own views. Only in this way, we can genuinely apply what we have learned.
The SSC Department is pleased to support the HKJC in its commitment to local football development. Our students from Bachelor of Social Sciences in Global and Environmental Studies have supported a two-day Family Football Clinic hosted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club in partnership with Manchester United. The student helpers attended a training session at the Jockey Club HKFA Football Training Centre and worked with Christopher O'Brien (OB), Head Coach of the Manchester United Soccer Schools Hong Kong and his team of coaches on 31 July and 14 August. The two-day Family Football Clinic consisted of professional workshops for parents and training activities for participants of HKJC’s School Development Scheme.
The SSC Department is pleased to support the HKJC in its commitment to local football development. Our students from Bachelor of Social Sciences in Global and Environmental Studies have supported a two-day Family Football Clinic hosted by the Hong Kong Jockey Club in partnership with Manchester United. The student helpers attended a training session at the Jockey Club HKFA Football Training Centre and worked with Christopher O'Brien (OB), Head Coach of the Manchester United Soccer Schools Hong Kong and his team of coaches on 31 July and 14 August. The two-day Family Football Clinic consisted of professional workshops for parents and training activities for participants of HKJC’s School Development Scheme.
Herbary Zhang, our final year Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme awardee, has recently been awarded the prestigious Ernst Mach Grant - Worldwide by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. This Fall, Herbary will be in the University of Salzburg conducting his research on gender and migration.
Currently under the supervision of Dr Isabella Ng, Herbary studied the single-mothers’ intersectional stigma and social exclusion in Thailand. His research has been making substantial impact already in Thailand as he has been awarded two research fellowships by both Mahidol University and Chulalongkorn University, the No. 1 and No. 2 universities in Thailand during his fieldwork.
The Ernst Mach Grant - Worldwide is a remarkably competitive research grant for young researchers from around the world. Only a few students from the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong were awarded the Ernst Mach Eurasia-Pacific Uninet Grant before. Herbary’s achievement has proven the exceptional caliber of our department’s research students as well as academic staff.
The International Summer Training Camp for Young Policy Scholars 2022 was held at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) from July 4 to 8 2022. With a highly attractive theme of ‘theory, methods, and career development’, this camp received more than 300 applications from all over the world. Some 40 outstanding young researchers from all five continents were selected to join this elite training camp that was delivered through the virtual mode.
Organized by the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS), this training camp was supported by generous funding from the EdUHK and its Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (FLASS). The programme was kicked off by Professor Chan Che Hin Chetwyn, Vice President (Research and Development) of the EdUHK. In his opening remarks, Professor Chan encouraged young researchers to establish closer ties with peers and promote mutual learning from this summer programme.
Led by leading scholars in the field of public policy, this training camp offers a comprehensive menu of academic and professional activities. Both cutting-edge theories and methodological innovations were illustrated generously by senior speakers. An editors’ forum was also organized by inviting editors of reputable international journals to share useful insights about how to get published. As a special feature of this summer program, senior and early-career policy professionals and consultants from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank shared their experiences of career planning and development in international organizations.
At the closing session, Dr Alex He Jingwei, Associate Head (Research and Development) of the APS Department congratulated the participants on their completion of a very intensive summer program. He also reiterated the Department’s enthusiastic commitment to promoting scholarly exchange and capacity building in the international policy research community.
On June 30 2022, the Research Grants Council announced the results of General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong’s flagship research funding scheme in the higher education sector. Two projects submitted by researchers of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies were successfully funded. In total, the Department has secured HK$1.8 million in this round of GRF exercise. One of the grant is rated 5.0 (full score) by the international review panel. APS’ good performance in securing external competitive grants serves as a strong testament of research excellence of EdUHK policy scholars.
 | Professor CHOU Kee Lee, Chair Professor of Social Policy | |
| Subject Area: | Social and Behavioural Sciences | |
| Project Title: | Reducing loneliness among Hong Kong older adults: A three—arm randomized controlled trial | |
| Awarded amount: | HK$1,281,294 | |
 | Dr HE Jingwei Alex, Associate Professor | |
| Subject Area: | Social and Behavioural Sciences | |
| Project Title: | Technocrats and Mid-Level Policy Entrepreneurship in China: Explaining Local Policy Innovations in the Social Welfare Arena | |
| Awarded amount: | HK$527,051 (rated 5.0 full score) | |