The Tai Po Fire — Contexts, Building Safety, and Hong Kong Society

This event will remember the victims of the tragic event. It features several scholars and experts on Hong Kong to discuss the implications of the tragic event on Hong Kong society, building codes, and how the diaspora community could support the victims.

 

 

Dr. Wendy S. Wong is a full professor at York University and a founding member of the Hong Kong Studies Group at the York Centre for Asian Research. She authored Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua (2002) and The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising and Graphic Design (2018), and co-edited Transnationalism in East and Southeast Asian Comics Art (2022), contributing to global design and comics studies.

 

Dr. Yan-ho Lai, aka Eric Lai, is a Senior Fellow at  Georgetown Center for Asian Law (GCAL) , and the author of  Legal Resistance under Authoritarianism: The Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong . He received his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening Scholar in 2013 and his Ph.D in law at SOAS University of London in 2022 respectively. His main research focuses on law and politics, law and society, law and social movement, national security, judicial politics and international human rights laws and practices in hybrid and authoritarian regimes. Lai is formerly a visiting fellow at the Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, formerly visiting researcher at King's College London Dickson Poon School of Law, and formerly visiting scholar at the University of St. Thomas in Texas. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Lai has been involved in civil society development and human rights education since 2010. He writes on law and politics, electoral integrity, judicial activism, international human rights, and religious freedom in academic journals, newspapers, and popular literature.

 

Fernando Cheung was a former member of the legislature in Hong Kong for 12 years. He received his PhD degree in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley and was the executive director of a nonprofit organization in Oakland California for 8 years.  After moving back to Hong Kong in 1996, he became a lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  Fernando joined the functional constituency of social welfare of the Legislative Council in 2004. He came to Canada in 2022 to seek political asylum after he was released from prison for contempt of the legislature in Hong Kong. He is currently a contract faculty member at the School of Social Work, York University in Toronto.

 

Andy Wong is the President of Canada-Hong Kong Link (CHKL), which advocates for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong and for policies protecting Canada from foreign interference. Before joining CHKL, he was a lecturer of Politics in a university in Hong Kong. His interest includes democracy and democratization in East Asia and Hong Kong Studies.