Jointly organized by the Department of Government and Public Administration and the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, the first international conference on youth studies in the history of CUHK took place on 30 May. Prof. Fanny M.C. Cheung, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, and Prof. Chiu Chi-yue, Dean of Social Science, welcomed over 100 participants in the opening ceremony.

The conference consisted of three panels: 'Youth as Agency in Public Policy Change', 'Youth and Media', and 'Youth and Citizenship'. Four distinguished overseas scholars with outstanding achievements in the field of youth studies and public policy were invited to present academic papers and interact with scholars and participants from CUHK and other local tertiary institutions. They were Prof. Howard Williamson, Prof. David Buckingham, Prof. Dr. Tom ter Bogt and Prof. Maurice Devlin.

The conference served as a large-scale multidisciplinary collaborative platform for four departments and school in the Faculty of Social Science, namely, the Department of Government and Public Administration, the School of Journalism and Communication, the Department of Sociology and the Department of Social Work to investigate the youth issue from different perspectives. The Master of Social Science Programme in Public Policy, the Public Policy Research Centre and the Youth Studies Programme were co-organizing partners of the event. The success of the event would not have been possible without their efforts.