Media

HKU weekly notice (from January 18 to 24, 2014)

17 Jan 2014

 

First Annual Hong Kong Public Interest Law Conference: Advancing Social Justice
The conference will bring together civil society and non-governmental groups with the legal profession in Hong Kong to engage in an open dialogue on advancing public interest law and practice in Hong Kong. It aims to promote best practices and innovation in advancing social justice, connect lawyers with public interest groups, and promote a culture of public service in the legal profession. 

The conference will begin with a keynote address by Mr. Colin Gonsalves, the Founder of Human Rights Law Network in India and a Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India. It will then include the following three panel discussions led by local champions of public interest law: 1) What is the need in Hong Kong – Identifying the Gaps in Access to Justice; 2) What are the obstacles to meeting the need – Access to the Law and Public Interest Lawyers; 3) Where do we go from here – Advancing a Public Interest Law Culture in Hong Kong. 

The day will conclude with a keynote address by Honorable Mr. Justice Kemal Bokhary, Former Permanent Judge, Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.

This event is free and open to the public.
Date: 18 January 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 8:45 am - 5:00 pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower HKU

For media enquiries, please contact Ms. Flora Leung, Centre for Comparative and Public Law, HKU (Email: fkleung@Hku.hk).

HKUL Book Talk - Steps to Paradise and Beyond: Hawaii to China, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and elsewhere

Speaker: Dr. Verner Bickley, MBE
Moderator: Dr. Gillian Bickley, Editor and Publisher
Date: January 23 (Thursday)
Time: 7:15pm to 9:00pm
Venue: Special Collections, 1/F Main Library
Language: English

About the Book
Steps to Paradise and Beyond, the second volume of Dr Verner Bickley's autobiography, describes some of the fascinating experiences and cross-cultural insights derived from his work and travels in many Asian and Pacific countries, including his official visit to China in November 1979 and his experiences in South Korea just before the assassination of President Park Chung-hee. He writes briefly about President Obama’s mother as an East-West Center grantee during Verner's time as Director of the EWC Culture Learning Institute and the President’s own education in Hawaii. Verner concludes with a brief description of how the Institute of Language in Education (now incorporated into the Hong Kong Institute of Education) was set up (in the early 1980s) by the Hong Kong Government "to raise substantially the professional standards of English and Chinese in the schools" of Hong Kong.

About the Speaker
Dr. Verner Bickley, MBE has lived in Asian and Pacific countries for over fifty years, enjoying a long and distinguished career of service in Singapore, Burma, Indonesia, Japan, Hawaii, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, including influential and path-breaking work on behalf of the British Council, the US federally-funded East-West Center housed at the University of Hawaii, and the then Education Department in Hong Kong. In his work at the East-West Center, in particular, he was at the forefront of a pioneering effort to embrace cross-disciplinary knowledge on the cutting edge of what subsequently became the "Pacific Rim" in academic and wider discourse. In Hong Kong, he was first director of the Institute of Language in Education (now incorporated in the Hong Kong Institute of Education) and contributed much to the understanding of the standard of English in Hong Kong.

For registration, please visit: http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2014_01.html

For further information, please visit:
http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2014_01.html

For enquiries, please contact Marina Yeung by email at mstyeung@hku.hk

University Museum and Art Gallery exhibition: "Embroidered Identities: Ornately Decorated Textiles and Accessories of Chinese Ethnic Minorities" and public talk
The exhibition presents traditional Chinese costumes, baby carriers and silver ornaments drawn from the collection of Mei-yin Lee. It demonstrates the wealth of colours, techniques and styles found in the on-going traditions of Chinese minority groups. The display is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, and the production of both exhibition and book has been generously supported by the HKU Museum Society in celebration of the Museum's 60th and Society's 25th anniversaries respectively.

Elaborately embroidered costumes and baby carriers, most of which originate with the Miao, Dong, Shui and Zhuang ethnic tribes of the south-western Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi are decorated with richly coloured, stitched and sewn ornamentations - and sometimes silver applications - indigenous to the particular culture and long-lived traditions they derive from. As some ethnic minorities lack a written script, the symbolism and colour-coding found in their textiles form a visual language that presents an important cultural and anthropological development and heritage still in practice today.

The exhibition will be held at 1/F T. T. Tsui Building, University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), 90 Bonham Road from 15 December 2013 to 9 February 2014.

UMAG's opening hours are from 09:30 to 18:00 Monday to Saturday and 13:00 to 18:00 on Sunday. The Museum is closed on University and public holidays.

Embroidered Identities: Ornately Decorated Textiles and Accessories of Chinese Ethnic Minorities with Mei-yin Lee (李美賢)
Date: January 18, 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 3pm to 4:30pm
Place: 1/F, T.T. Tsui Building, UMAG, HKU
Speaker: Mei-yin Lee (李美賢) (in Cantonese)
Please visit www.hkumag.hku.hk or call 2241-5500 for more information.

For media enquiries, please contact UMAG Communication Officer: Miss Elena Cheung, tel: 2241 5512, email: elenac@hku.hk .