HKU Professors Take Top Honours at Nation’s Leading Social Science Research Awards

Two professors at the University of Hong Kong have been recognised at the tenth Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards, the Ministry of Education’s flagship scheme for humanities and social sciences research across tertiary institutions in the Chinese Mainland and, since its expansion, Hong Kong’s universities. Professor Cecilia Chan of the Faculty of Education and Professor Michael Ng, Associate Dean (Research and Institutional Advancement) of the Faculty of Law, each received an award in distinct categories, underscoring the breadth of work being honoured under the programme, from artificial intelligence policy in higher education to the legal history of colonial censorship.

Professor Chan received the third-class award in the category of Educational Science Research for her paper, A comprehensive AI policy education framework for university teaching and learning. The study stands out for its methodological rigour: it employs a mixed-methods design that combines quantitative and qualitative research to gather data from students, faculty, and staff across a range of disciplines at Hong Kong universities. By triangulating survey data with qualitative insights, the research captures how different members of the university community experience and understand the rapid arrival of generative and other AI tools in teaching, learning, and assessment.

The core contribution of the paper is an AI ecosystem education policy framework that spans three interconnected domains: teaching, governance, and operations. Rather than treating artificial intelligence as a purely technical challenge to be managed by information technology departments, the framework positions it as an institutional ecosystem in which pedagogy, rules, and day-to-day administrative processes must evolve together. This systems-level view offers universities a structured way to think about how AI integration reshapes academic environments, and it provides stakeholders with actionable insights into both the opportunities and the risks that accompany adoption.

The timing of the research is significant. Universities worldwide are grappling with how to regulate AI use in coursework, how to prepare graduates for an AI-saturated labour market, and how to maintain academic integrity without stifling innovation. Chan’s framework speaks directly to these tensions, proposing that institutions can move forward with confidence only when innovation is paired with trust, accountability, and meaningful learning. In her response to the award, she said: “I am honoured to receive this award and grateful to MoE for recognising this research. At a time when AI brings both excitement and uncertainty, education must help shape its future. This research offers institutions a framework to move forward with confidence, ensuring that innovation goes hand in hand with trust, accountability and meaningful learning.”

Professor Ng’s award, by contrast, reaches back more than a century and a half. He received the Popular Science Publication Award in the Law category for his book, Political Censorship in British Hong Kong: Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842–1997). The work is the product of an ambitious archival effort involving the decryption and interpretation of confidential documents, including classified communications exchanged between London and Hong Kong across the colonial period. By reading these records against the published legal and political history of the territory, Ng reconstructs how censorship actually operated beneath the surface of official pronouncements.

The book’s central finding is striking and likely to provoke debate among historians and legal scholars. Ng argues that Hong Kong’s freedom of speech and judicial independence were not rooted in British legal traditions, as is often assumed, but were instead products of specific historical circumstances shaped by British policies towards China during the colonial era. In other words, the civil liberties that came to define the territory did not arrive as a straightforward transplant of Westminster-style law; they emerged contingently, as colonial authorities balanced commercial interests, geopolitical calculation, and local pressures over more than 150 years.

Ng reflected on the significance of the award for public engagement with legal history: “I am truly delighted that this legal history research, grounded in declassified records, has been embraced by the public and honoured with this award. Law and history share a core commitment to factual evidence; uncovering the past is essential for us to understand today and guide our future.” The Popular Science Publication Award category itself is notable, as it rewards research output written for a general audience rather than specialists, signalling the Ministry’s interest in scholarship that travels beyond the academy.

The Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Humanities and Social Sciences) were established by the Ministry of Education in 1995 to recognise outstanding research projects in the humanities and social sciences at tertiary institutions in the Chinese Mainland. Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions were subsequently included in the scheme, making it a genuinely cross-border accolade for the region’s universities. The awards are regarded as the most reputable and influential honour in the field of social sciences in the nation, and receiving one signifies an awardee’s remarkable contribution to advancing research and development in higher education.

The tenth round of the awards, in which Chan and Ng were honoured, illustrates the scheme’s dual character. On one side sits Chan’s forward-looking study of AI policy, a piece of educational science designed to help institutions navigate a technology that is transforming classrooms in real time. On the other sits Ng’s historical excavation of censorship and civil liberties, a work of legal history that uses declassified evidence to complicate comfortable narratives about the origins of rights. That both projects were recognised under the same programme speaks to the awards’ remit: to reward rigorous, evidence-based research across the full span of the humanities and social sciences, whether it addresses the newest technologies or the deepest archives.

For the University of Hong Kong, the double recognition highlights the institution’s research strength in education and law, two faculties whose work reaches from policy frameworks for emerging technologies to the documentary record of empire. Chan’s mixed-methods framework gives university leaders a template for building AI governance that earns the trust of students and staff, while Ng’s decrypted archives remind readers that the freedoms enjoyed today have contingent, traceable histories. Together, the two awards show how evidence, whether statistical or archival, remains the foundation on which both future policy and historical understanding are built.

Subject of Research: AI policy education and colonial censorship research recognised by the Ministry of Education

Article Title: HKU Professors receive the 10th Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award from the Ministry of Education

Article References: HKU Professors receive the 10th Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award from the Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: University of Hong Kong, Ministry of Education, Higher Education Awards, AI policy, legal history, social sciences, Professors, receive, Higher, Education, Outstanding, Scientific