University of Hong Kong

This course presents how to recognize and appreciate the importance and values of cultural heritages in Hong Kong, China and around the world, and to understand how digital technologies can be used to conserve and preserve cultural heritage worldwide. Three digital preservation projects serve as running examples throughout this course: one from Hong Kong (King Yin Lei virtual reality website), one from Mainland China (e-Dunhuang online gallery), and one from Europe (European digital collections). The course also gives a broad understanding on how economic development and heritage preservation impact us as global citizens in this information age. The capstone of the course is a group project where each group of students uses an off-the-shelf and easy-to-use Web application to create a digital gallery for a cultural heritage in Hong Kong or their own places of origin. The digital gallery is a unique contribution to preserving cultural heritage of the world!

This course focuses on philosophically interesting questions surrounding religion, including such issues as the evidential value of religious experiences and testimony of miracles; the existence of God; and the dependence or independence of morality and meaning on religious foundations.

This course examines the links between environmental protection and economic development. It focuses on how the world manages its natural and environmental resources to meet the human needs of the present while at the same time preserving these resources for future generations. The course introduces students to different views on how human society achieves the goal of economic growth without depleting earth’s capital and jeopardizing the planet’s life support system. Other topics include the concept of sustainable development and its evolution; the challenges, equity issues, technology development, and free trade; sustainable development indicators and ecological footprints analysis; governance and international cooperation; and the sustainability of city and country. The course uses Hong Kong and China for case studies. 

This course examines the evolution of Buddhist meditation: from its origination to its latest manifestation as psychosocial interventions spanning more than 2000 years. Through the study of Buddhist meditation texts and experiential learning, the theories and practices of several important Buddhist meditation methods will be introduced, such as mindful-breathing, compassionate meditation, samādhi and vipassanā. 

This course examines core issues facing entrepreneurs and tech startups in Hong Kong and elsewhere and the legal, regulatory and/or policy issues and consideration arising from these. It covers the pervasive role of law (domestic and cross-jurisdictional) in the context of ABCD of technology (namely AI, blockchain, cloud and data) and business models (such as digital assets and circular economies), as well as the importance of self-governance standards and ethics, especially where there is an absence of laws and regulations.

This course examines current observational capabilities, present how satellite data can contribute to understanding the functions and interactions of Earth’s sub-systems (e.g., atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, and hydrosphere), and provide the application examples of environmental change at regional to global scales, such as forest disturbance, water quality, carbon emission, air/water/soil pollution, natural disasters, agricultural production. These are highly related to some crucial sustainability issues, so this course will, directly and indirectly, address multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 (Zero hunger), SDG6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities), SDG11 (Sustainable cities and community), SDG13 (Climate action), SDG 14 (Life below water) and SDG15 (Life on land), in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set by the United Nations in 2015.

This course examines democratic theory. It covers topics as justifications of democracy, different types of democracy, democracy in different cultural communities, democracy’s relationship to social justice, populism, capitalism, and globalization.