From October 27 to 28, The School of Public Administration, South China University of Technology (SCUT), the Department of Asian and Policy Studies, the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), and the Division of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University (LU) co-organized the Fifth International Conference on Social Policy and Governance Innovation at the campus of SCUT. The theme of the conference was "Towards Collaborative and Balanced Public Policy".

The conference sets out to facilitate scholarly discussion on collaborative governance and social-value-oriented policy development, and particularly encourage synergy between policy research and practice from an international and comparative perspective. Five keynote and featured speakers together with around 60 presenters from over 10 countries and regions such as the Canada, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, Hong Kong and Mainland China joined the event.

Group photo of the participants

When opening the Conference, the School of Public Administration of SCUT organized a special ceremony to appoint Professor Ka Ho Mok, Vice President and Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Lingnan University, as Chair Professor of Public Policy of the School of SCUT, to recognize his outstanding academic achievements. The conferment of Chair Professorship to Professor Mok would further strengthen the collaborations between SCUT and Lingnan University.

Appointment Ceremony of SCUT Chair Professorship to Prof Ka Ho Mok

During the one and a half days’ conference, participants took deep discussion combining multiple issues in policy theories and methodology, the sharing economy and collaborative governance, social security and assistance and so on. The platform served to be very fruitful in exploring new strategies and policies in support of governance innovation promoting disciplinary integration and development which met the core objective of this conference.