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Established in December 2002, the Centre for Civil Society and Governance (“the Centre”) was the first research centre in Hong Kong dedicated to enhancing our knowledge of civil society—its nature, constituents, dynamics, roles (in particular its contribution toward governance)—and to contributing to the attainment of a sustainable society through forging community-based, innovative solutions to inform policy deliberation and collective action.
To study the characteristics and functions of civil society;
To facilitate collaboration and collective actions to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at the local, regional and international levels;
To gain a good understanding of various types of civil society organizations, especially those which can foster a sustainable society;
To develop practical measures that can strengthen civil society and enhance its impact as an agent for attaining a sustainable society; and
To foster dialogues and partnerships between the university, government, corporates, and the social sector.
The work of the Centre is grounded upon an appreciation of, and a commitment to, a knowledge-based approach to collaborating and engaging with the community in pursuit of a sustainable future for all. Through our impact projects, we develop and experiment policy actions and solutions to cope with policy challenges and to induce systemic changes leading to sustainable development. The key research areas of the Centre are:
Collaborative Governance
To foster cross-sector collaboration and advocate community empowerment through proactive engagement as a key solution to the complex policy challenges. An integrated and collaborative approach allows society to draw upon knowledge, methods, and perspectives from all quarters of society to proactively organise collective actions at different levels and scales to manage complex social problems.
Social Entrepreneurship for Sustainability
To adopt a community-based and commoning approach as a major component in the toolkit for social entrepreneurship, and to advocate effective management and equitable access to shared resources.
Philanthropic Activities
To help develop an enabling environment for philanthropic activities, covering both the legal dimension as well as models of self-governance for civic and associative activities.
Corporate Social Responsibility
To promote the awareness of corporate social responsibility among university students and business firms in Hong Kong and elsewhere.
Community Action and Development
To promote and nurture self-governing activities in local communities for attaining a sustainable society.
Collaboration is one of the keys for unlocking sustainability. The Centre for Civil Society and Governance adopts a collaborative approach in our teaching and research projects with an aim to producing shared knowledge and joint actions to a common vision. We proactively engage partners from public, private and nonprofit sectors. To name a few, these include HSBC, The Hong Kong Jockey Club, Council for Sustainable Development, Countryside Conservation Office of HKSAR Government, Ashoka, St. James’ Settlement, The Conservancy Association, The Hong Kong Council of Social Service, etc.
Centre for Civil Society and Governance
Room 703, The Jockey Club Tower,
Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
Fax: 2857-2521
Email: ccsg@hku.hk
Personal Information Collection Statement
Copyright 2020 Centre for Civil Society and Governance, The University of Hong Kong. All Rights Reserved.
Jenna is a Product Policy Manager on Facebook’s Misinformation Policy team. She specialises in global health misinformation and misinformation in the Asia-Pacific region, and is based in Singapore.
Sam Traynor is the Product Policy manager for Inauthentic behavior at Facebook. For almost the last decade he has been working in the integrity space in variety of roles and companies mainly focusing on protecting user voice, the authenticity of conversations, and the integrity of the civic process.
Meg Chang is the Content Regulation Policy Lead for Facebook in the APAC region. Prior to this role, she was an Elections Manager and led Facebook’s election integrity efforts across EMEA, including the European Elections, the UK general election, and the Polish parliamentary and presidential elections, among many others. Before Facebook, she was the head of operations and publisher at EUobserver, a Brussels-based EU political and investigative news outlet. She also worked as a management consultant for Global 1000 companies in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. She studied politics and law at the University of Kent in the UK.
Alex Pompe is a Research Manager on Facebook’s Data for Good team. This team builds privacy-protecting data sets to aid response work for natural disasters and public health crises (here is a recent example from the COVID19 response: https://research.fb.com/blog/2020/06/protecting-privacy-in-facebook-mobility-data-during-the-covid-19-response/). Previously, Alex led the growth team at a startup scaling the company to 35 countries over 3 years. Prior to this he worked on access to information and Internet programs for 6 years at an international NGO called IREX; first in Ukraine, next in Namibia, and then in Washington DC. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching mathematics in Namibia from 2006 to 2008. Alex holds a BS in physics from the University of Illinois, and an MS from the University of Michigan (where he also taught astrophysics.) He has served as a guest lecturer for the University of Maryland’s School of Information.
Raina is the Head of Privacy and Data Policy, Engagement, APAC for Facebook. She is a lawyer by training and is a former regulator, having previously worked at the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in the position of Assistant Privacy Commissioner (Legal, Policy & Research). Prior to joining the Hong Kong data protection authority, Raina had extensive legal in-house experience and held management positions in both Hong Kong and Shanghai. She served as the Assistant Chief Counsel – Head of Legal at Hong Kong Disneyland and was the Deputy Chief Counsel – Head of Legal at Shanghai Disney Resort during the initial construction stage of the project when she helped set up the legal function at the Shanghai Disney Resort. Raina held a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Dr. Chan’s primary research concerns the institutions that shape the consumption and distortion of information in different organizational settings. His current research explores how bureaucrats handle information and the impact of institutions on their choices.
Ongoing projects deal with different aspects of bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes, such as administrative oversight, juridical intervention, internal reporting, and legislative decision-making.
He holds a PhD Degree in Public Policy from the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs and the Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bloomington.
Dr Winnie Law is the Deputy Director and Principal Lecturer at the Centre for Civil Society and Governance of The University of Hong Kong. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on sustainable development, community planning and environmental management. She also works with a team of researchers and conducts policy research, action research and knowledge exchange projects on rural revitalization, social innovation, community engagement and corporate sustainability. Dr Law has been a director of the Conservancy Association since 2005 and has served on a number of HKSAR Government’s advisory committees including Advisory Council for the Environment. At the regional level, Dr Law was commissioned by the EU and UNDP as a planning and social monitoring expert for their city planning and environmental management programmes in Vietnam. Dr Law was one of the invited speakers for the first TedxTongChongSt’s series on Hacking the Future and delivered a talk on Future of Sustainability in 2019.
Wai-Fung (Danny) Lam is Director of the Centre for Civil Society and Governance (CCSG), and Professor in Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. He finished his undergraduate study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Indiana University, Bloomington. Professor Lam is an expert in common-pool resource management, institutional policy analysis, public governance, and civil society. His research has focused on the design of efficient institutional arrangements for the governance and management of public resources, a core issue in public administration and sustainable development. Professor Lam has served on the editorial committees of Public Administration Review (PAR), International Review of Administrative Sciences (IRAS), Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (JCPA), Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ), and Asian Politics and Policy (APP), and is co-editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Administration (APJPA).
George Chen joined Facebook in January 2016 as the company’s first-ever policy representative based in Hong Kong, home for Facebook in the Greater China region. Currently as the Public Policy Director for Greater China, Mongolia, and Central Asia, George serves as Facebook’s “ambassador” to engage with the people and governments across the vast and diverse regions.
Prior to Facebook, George has worked in the media sector for about 15 years. George was a 2014 Yale World Fellow and a 2015 fellow of the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. George is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hong Kong where he focuses his research on freedom of expression and misinformation.
